If you’re an avid PC gamer, you’d be hard pressed to finds someone that hasn’t heard of Valorant – the beta took over the front page of Twitch and YouTube for a number of weeks and now the game is fully released and live, there’s a lot of conversation around whether or not it could be the next big esport title – this is also being fueled by the number of players who have moved from playing other titles professionally to join the Valorant scene early.

To celebrate the launch, a $200,000 tournament was held through Twitch under their popular platform of Twitch Rivals, although this had been held in a different way to how other games previously had handled the competition, it seems to have been done to great success. The event culminated in one of the first fully formed teams in the scene – T1 – winning the event quite comfortably but has also more importantly done a great deal in pushing forward what many may consider to be the next big competitive title – by exposing both the great aspects of the game in the current state, and the flaws.

The current flaws are namely the lack of a spectator mode for the competitive setting, and a lack of variety – it’s fully expected that a fully realised spectator mode will be added once the game starts pushing the competitive scene, and the studio Riot Games have a solid base to build on through the tool that is used in their other title League of Legends, but it was made quickly apparent this is a priority if they intend on pushing the game any time soon. The issue with variety is a little more complex – yes the game is new, so naturally there will be less variety, but taking too long to introduce new maps mainly is what could cause interest  to dry up – currently the four map rotation is already looking a bit stale, especially when measured against the competition.

There are some big shoes to fill – as mentioned the studios other game is already a well-established esport giant in League of Legends which leads many to believe that Valorant will be a resounding success, largely due to the solid production value there – but the main competitor in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a tactical first person shooter, has seemingly been moving from strength to strength – it was recently announced that it is the most bet on esport in the world as sites such as Max Casino review those not blocked by initiatives such as Gamstop, possibly helping lead this aspect of the game explode in markets like the UK. With such a good name to compete against it could be difficult to stand out in an already defined market.

The game is still new however – brand new in fact, there’s plenty of room to grow and develop in the areas that may still be considered weak by many, but for having such a strong start with it’s first official tournament, it’s clear that this growth will be extremely quick.