5 Reasons Why Valorant May Become More Popular Than CS:GO In 2023
Valorant is a free first-person shooter developed and published by Riot Games. At pre-launch, it was codenamed Project A until June 2020, when it was released for Windows. Valorant takes inspiration from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which is why it is often compared to the esports title.
The gameplay is a futuristic tactical hero shooter type with some roleplaying where ten players play as Agents, special characters based on world cultures. There are two teams of five, the attacking and defending teams, where Agents play their roles using their unique chargeable abilities. Each round of gameplay begins with a pistol and a special ability.
Others are bought using the in-game currency and shopping system. Valorant is set in a world similar to earth. At the start, players choose their desired agent and begin playing to be the first team to win 13 rounds. This requires attackers to complete their assigned objective or eliminate the defending team and vice versa.
Attackers are tasked with planting a bomb they must defend until it goes off, while the defenders are responsible for neutralizing the bomb as soon as possible. Despite the game revolving around attackers and defenders, the developers have created various game modes to increase the dynamism.
What Does Valorant Have Over CS:GO?
Valorant took over the gaming industry, especially the first-person shooter genre, when it was released in 2020. Most of its success was due to the unique story, gameplay, and characters, and the creators continue to capitalize on these features. It gets crazier because Valorant’s stepping into the esports scene made it even more popular.
Being a close competitor with CS:GO, Valorant’s impressive success makes players wonder if it will soon be bigger than CS:GO. It is almost unbelievable to think about this because of how big CS:GO is in the esports industry. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive launched in 2012 and has been around for about a decade.
Now, it has its place among the most popular esports titles with several sponsorship deals, high player salaries and billion dollar market. With all of these, it would seem like its popularity cannot be contested.
Novelty
On the surface, Valorant seems very similar to CS:GO. The user interface is similar, and the game mechanics, skins, combat, and movement also have a semblance of CS:GO’s. What makes Valorant different and more attractive is the newness it brings.
Besides the colours being brighter and the maps seemingly unreal, Valorant’s collection of characters is something new in the esports world. This is the core of Valorant gameplay. The Agents have features reminiscent of every corner of the world, with unique styles and abilities.
Betting
Although Valorant and CS:GO can be compared in gameplay, the two titles are very popular, making it difficult to determine which is or will be more popular. One has to look at different aspects, including those of people who patronize the CS:GO and Valorant betting sites.
Valorant betting is just as easy as CS:GO betting. All you have to do is choose a Valorant betting website, put in a deposit, bet and hope for the best. Valorant has more betting options. You can bet on the match winner, map winner, tournament winner, spike plant, first blood, and characters, and there’s also the live betting option.
With this and all of the other upsides that Valorant has going for it, that popularity throne seems closer than ever.
Dynamism
From the valorant tournaments to the game modes and valorant events, Riot Games combines many elements to simultaneously offer a dynamic and lovable esports game. Consider the game modes, for example. There are nine: Unrated, Spike Rush, Swift play, Competitive, Premier, Deathmatch, Escalation, Replication, and Snowball Fight.
CS:GO also has nine game modes, two of which are also present in Valorant. However, the game modes unique to Valorant exist to enable it to provide a dynamic experience for players. For example, Snowball Fight lets you use a snowball launcher to play a deathmatch game.
The Player Base
Since its launch in 2020, Valorant has covered notable ground in a genre once dominated by CS:GO. By October 2022, Valorant recorded a daily player count of 2.25 million, quite a large number in contrast to CS:GO’s peak of 950,000 players per day. This means that Riot Games sees at least 15 million players monthly. This is a bit problematic for CS:GO, as it has been around for about eight years before Valorant.
Even on viewing platforms such as Twitch, Valorant sits in fourth place in the streaming charts, while CS:GO is in sixth place. Valorant has about 4 million watch hours and 108,692 viewers on the platform.
The Future
In terms of tournaments, Valorant has a lot planned for 2023. Riot Games plans to introduce the kick-off tournament and enable more players to participate internationally through the challenger leagues’ ascension tournament. The company has already built so much hype for the year with announcements here and there, helping the game's popularity.
Conclusion
The two may be very similar, but Valorant is now offering things CS:GO players have wanted for years; an anti-cheat system and 128 servers. 2023 is a year where CS:GO can have a good comeback and retain its relevance, or Valorant can take it up a notch and release even better features to fully establish its place in the top esports titles. It depends on what happens this year, and we sure are eager to see it!
