It has been over five years since Riot Games launched VALORANT in June 2020. Since then, we have seen the game change drastically from its first iteration. Currently, the game consists of over 10 maps and 20 new agents. At the same time, many agree that the game reached its peak of popularity in 2021 and 2022. Thus, it begs the question of whether VALORANT is slowly dying and how long the game will last. In this article, let’s take a closer look at this topic and explore the community’s opinions on it.
The answer to this question is quite a complex one because it is pretty subjective. At the same time, not all information about the game is public, unlike games on Steam. The best way to examine the reasons for VALORANT’s slow decline is to break it down into two parts. The first being the analytical side of things, and the other being the community opinion. If we take a look at Reddit, multiple posts discuss the topic of VALORANT slowly dying for them.
On the VALORANT subreddit, there are multiple posts with the title ” VALORANT dying. Within these posts, we can see various users share their points. Redditor International_Bat972 stated the following.
What this user is talking about is a common problem seen in most games. As the game gets older, we see that the people who have been playing the game for its early years have stopped now. A significant reason on the subreddit was that playing ranked matches doesn’t feel or hold any form of value. Redditor No-Course5688 emulated this point quite well, stating the following:
When Marvel Rivals launched this year, the game employed a similar monetization model to VALORANT. There aren’t any skins that are tradable, but players can win skins for their favourite heroes for free. Players who finish with a rank higher than Gold within Marvel Rivals receive a free hero skin in the game. In the 5 years since VALORANT launched, we haven’t seen such incentives for players.
As someone who has played the game for over 4 years, I have seen the game grow impressively. The last time I remember a new game mode being added to the game was Swiftplay. Back then, it was a cry for help from the community as they didn’t want to play casually for one hour. They wanted short games similar to Spike Rush but without the buffs.
In the early years of VALORANT, we saw the famous Christmas game mode come to VALORANT. That feature has returned to the game since then. At the same time, players can play with the snowball gun during Escalation if they are lucky. The quality of VALORANT has been declining due to the lack of new content. At most, fans can only expect new skins in the game, which many believe haven’t been up to the mark recently. The most recent case would be the VALORANT Champions 2025 skin collection.
The Reddit user oligubaa on the VALORANT Subreddit stated something similar on the lines:
On the VALORANT competitive subreddit, we see another perspective of the story. Since the launch of VALORANT Esports, we have witnessed tournament viewership numbers of the tournament increase at a gradual rate. No matter which teams participate in the tournament, each VALORANT Masters and Champions tournament has incredible numbers.
According to Esports Charts, nearly all VALORANT Champions tournaments to date have boasted over 1 million peak viewers. Each year, we see new regions have a slow increase in viewership numbers. One Redditor in the VALORANT Competitive subreddit shares the following sentiment on the current state of VALORANT and VALORANT Esports:
Right now, the popularity of VALORANT is slowly shifting from playing ranked in the game to watching the VCT tournaments like various other sports. We have seen this trend mainly in the most popular sports like cricket and football. A majority of fans of the English Premier League may not play football daily, but they follow the team they support with great passion.
Similar to older games that are popular, like League of Legends and Counter-Strike, we have seen these games have a fan base for their esports events. This can be clearly seen with the number of viewers for the tournaments of this game rising. Thus, the answer to the question of how long VALORANT lasts more focuses on how they deal with their esports ecosystem in the future.
With the recent launch of VALORANT mobile, otherwise. Notably, the game’s launch in China has led to the match achieving mainstream success. It is reported that last year, the game had over a million players playing at once in China. Recently, there have been reports concerning VALORANT Mobile that the game had over 70 million people pre-registering to play the game.
If VALORANT Mobile is released worldwide, we will see an increase in its player base in countries in Asia. Around the world, we might see a significant jump in daily users. VALORANT Mobile launched with more game modes available than VALORANT PC and console. Thus, it shows that Riot Games knows that VALORANT needs to have more game modes to keep the fan base engaged.
Revenue-wise, it doesn’t feel like VALORANT is slacking back either. In the past, we have seen teams that qualify for a VALORANT Champions tournament receive $1 million just out of the net proceeds from the skin collection.
Rather than dying, VALORANT is making a transition. While the number of daily new players might be reducing, the older community is still tuning in to watch the VALORANT Champion Tour tournaments. Only time will tell if we ever get to see VALORANT hit a peak viewership of 10 million viewers during one of its tournaments. Until then, all one must hope is that Riot Games keeps the production quality of the VALORANT Esports as high as possible. At the same time, make sure to follow the changes in the 2027 season, as there is an emphasis on making the esport more sustainable and future-proof.
Featured image credit: Riot Games
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