Twitch broke its all-time concurrent viewer record today with the release of Riot Games’ new first-person tactical shooter, VALORANT.
The previous concurrent viewer record on Twitch sat at 3.99 million people in August 2018. But the explosive debut of VALORANT has shattered the previous record with over four million viewers on the platform. The tactical shooter reached a collective 1.7 million viewers on its first day of closed beta.
Just Chatting followed up with 217,000 viewers, then CS:GO and Fortnite sat in third with around 177,000. The ESL Pro League was airing at the same time as the VALORANT beta launch, which likely drove numbers even higher.
Right now, big-name content creators are pulling in six-digit viewership counts. Summit1g reached over 200,000 viewers, TimtheTatman hit over 100,000, and former Overwatch pro xQc has hovered just under the 80,000 viewer mark with VALORANT.
By hitting 1.7 million viewers, VALORANT also surpassed the peak viewership of the Fortnite World Cup, which managed to hit 1.69 million concurrent viewers last summer.
The only game that hit a higher peak viewership on Twitch was League of Legends, which reached 1.74 million viewers during the 2019 World Championship. VALORANT is only around 40,000 viewers away from taking the crown away from Riot’s first love, though.
Viewership isn’t expected to stay this high as the beta rolls on toward this summer, but this shows the huge potential that VALORANT has in the streaming world.
