Valorant's impact on CS:GO more than expected

Riot Games' Valorant has been around for a while now and has impreessed with how well it is doing against heavyweight CS:GO

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has dominated the competitive shooter genre for a few years now. Despite some ups and downs, CS:GO tournaments were where we saw the likes of Shroud blow up in popularity, clan rivalries formed, and a load of other industry-significant events. Unfortunately for CS:GO, Valorant came at a time when CS:GO was going through some changes in its league structure.

That, and the fact that last year's pandemic canceled a lot of the LAN events scheduled for 2020.

With those in place, Valorant had the road space to zoom on through. Riot is no newbie in hosting tournaments and marketing them effectively is just part of the day-in-the-life. As such, the Valorant competitions held all over the world have seen much success as of late.

Valorant‘s pull on CS:GO fans

The result then is that the fan base of CS:GO has more to watch out for. It has been said in the past that Valorant is basically CS:GO but with special abilities and if that is the case, CS:GO has something to think about.

What doesn't help CS:GO is having their players transition into professional league Valorant. Early adopter Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan pointed fingers at the state of CS:GO esports which provided the final argument for the player.

Shahzam, in an interview with VPEsports, said, “You used to be able to put a team together and train hard to qualify tournaments and go up in the rankings, but that’s not how it works anymore.”

Shahzam follows up the statement saying, “Not that I’m against all of it, I understand the orgs are trying to make CS:GO sustainable.” What this can tell audiences though is that some of the players leaving the CS sphere could simply be a symptom of something bigger.

Now, it has to be said that Valorant is nowhere near replacing CS:GO as the top Esport FPS. No, the title remains with CS:GO for the time being.

That said, they will still have to keep the threat of Valorant in mind as time progresses. With more and more league players retiring at a young age, professional esports athletes will be cycling at a much higher rate.