Streaming superstar and former CS:GO pro, Michael “shroud” Grzesiek, has firmly believes that Riot Games’ Valorant will outgrow Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, as the most popular competitive FPS game in esports.
The FPS star stressed that, despite the lack of multi-regional competitions, due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, “North America’s Valorant scene is still really solid right now.”
Shroud also pointed out that CS:GO’s viewership numbers have been dipping, due to the lack of LAN events, which leaves the door wide open for Valorant to take over the FPS scene. “If Valorant nails the timing of coming to LAN and tournaments are popping off, it’s going to blow up even more,” he noted.
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Counter Strike has always been perceived as the leading competitive FPS title in all of esports. And it is one of the most popular competitive scenes in Europe, North America, and South America, with a wide array of teams that have cemented their positions as premier organizations.
They eventually branched out into different esports as well. European org Astralis, in particular, made their name by competing in CS:GO, and now have ventured into FIFA and League of legends.
But CS:GO’s reign as the biggest FPS esport is now being challenged by Riot Games’ Valorant, a relatively newer game that took the community by storm. Most notably, multiple esports orgs formed teams, even while Valorant was in its beta phase.
Presently, pro players from different game genres have, likewise, tried their hand at playing the 5v5 competitive FPS, too. Some of these players, like OWL’s 2019 MVP Jay “sinatraa” Won and Fortnite World Cup 2019 runnerup Harrison “psalm” Chang, eventually decided to pursue a new career in Valorant.
The fact of the matter is, plenty of esports organizations — such as Cloud9, Team Liquid, and BIG — that already had their own CS:GO rosters also decided to venture into Valorant. Other orgs, like T1, have also formed competitive FPS rosters for the first time; while teams like TSM and 100 Thieves have chosen to focus their efforts solely on Valorant.
With the First Strike series set to begin in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and many more regions around the world, Valorant is only going to get bigger from here on out.
READ MORE: How to watch Riot’s North American Valorant First Strike tournaments
