You have definitely heard about a new superhot first-person shooter in town. No, I don’t mean Call of Duty Warzone although that’s also blowing up in recent leagues. Instead, I’m talking about Valorant. This is the first title developed by Riot Games, that isn’t set in the League of Legends universe which makes it interesting. After playing many hours of the game – it’s clear that Valorant is a super-competitive game catering, perhaps to a small slice of the overall gaming community. Right now, it’s only for PC.
Most of the pro-gamers have often compared Valorant with the most popular FPS “CSGO” due to the similar objective the games share. Most of the gamers think that Valorant is the new version of CSGO, a CSGO killer, or a mixup of Counter-Strike and Overwatch.
Many CSGO pros are left with no other choice but to switch games to stay relevant in the pro scene. Freakazoid, after playing CSGO for 10 years, the champ finally decided to quit the game, to pursue his career in Valorant. He’s not the only one. The pros who couldn’t succeed in Counter-Strike are also leaving the CSGO scene. This might spell trouble right now for Counter-Strike. But this is going to affect the North American region badly.
CSGO Pros Making The Move
You know, we got guys like Freakazoid, ScreaM, Mixwell, Brax, and maybe even Dennis. Other pro players and already retired Counter-Strike pros tons of them are making the switch. They were fun to watch and I cheered for many of them. The critical point being that Valorant offers a range of gameplay functionalities and mechanism which CSGO may lacked, it’s not that they had no other choice. The rising game like Valorant, why would you not switch for the opportunity.
As the hype around Valorant is so strong, people are being signed before the game is even out of the closed beta. I don’t blame a single pro. It’s a very sad thing that a lot of the pro players you probably cheered for in CS are no more in CS. But, you can still cheer for them in a different esport. It’s also super sad to see a guy who was begging not to have to make the switch and now he’s having to make the switch because of the money. And the contracts, they just aren’t there for CS right now. Even pros from other popular games like Fortnite, PUBG, Overwatch, RainbowSix Siege and Overwatch have started switching to Valorant.
The 27-year-old CSGO veteran Ryan “Freakazoid“ Abadir, has announced that he has decided to quit CS:GO to pursue a career in Valorant. He has played with teams such as Cloud9, Echo Fox, and Ghost Gaming. Valorant took the esports industry by a storm. Valorant has overwhelmed Fortnite in viewership on Twitch, eventually urging CSGO pros to change the game.
Although, Freakazoid received a lot of backlash from his fans for shifting to Valorant, because some of his fans are not exactly happy with it. Eventually, he took to Twitter and said what he had to. According to Freakazoid “Professional players frequently change their teams. How is it any different for gamers to change a game?”
25-year-old Belgian player Adil “ScreaM” Benrlitom, who is known for his one-taps in the CS:GO community has switched to Valorant. ScreaM has played for teams like G2 Esports, Team Envy, etc. ScreaM also said that it’s very satisfying to kill the enemies in Valorant. After playing many hours of the game, it’s clear that Valorant is a super-competitive game catering to perhaps a small slice of the overall gaming community.
ScreaM led Valorant team, Team Prodigy won the Fnatic Proving Grounds: Valorant Open tournament. The team showcased talents like Mixwell, Dafran, KingMezii, and Shaiiko.
Valve shut the door, Riot opened another
Did you know that Brax was the first officially signed Valorant Pro? T1 had officially signed him before the game even released. Brax was also a former Counter-Strike pro. I say former here because he’s banned for five-years by Valve for being involved in match fixing alongside his team mates. Not that he’s proud of it, but definitely isn’t of the opinion to exit from the esports or competitive community just yet. Despite the ban, he is still active in the CSGO community. Further, he is not only the first-ever banned CSGO player to join Valorant. But he is also the first-ever signed Valorie pro.
Brax is the first-ever pro who officially signed for Valorant. International League of Legends powerhouse T1 signed Braxton “swag” Pierce as the first member of its new Valorant roster.
Brax announced his retirement from competitive CSGO earlier this week, citing his inability to compete at the esport’s highest levels due to an ongoing ban from the game’s developer, Valve. The ban stems from a 2016 match-fixing incident when swag was still technically a teenager. Others involved in the incident have repeatedly called for Valve to lift the indefinite ban on swag, but those requests have fallen on deaf ears.
CSGO is content-less, streaming the game is BORING
Well, that’s not what I suggest, but some of the world renowned pros of the game. According to one of the most successful Danes, CSGO gets boring with time. Dev1ce’s opinion is further echoed by Mixwell, which is also a well known face of the game. Trust me, these are the guys who grind this game for hours every day and speak their minds freely. It might just fall to dumb-ears, but that’s not just the point here.
Many CS pros like Nicolai ‘dev1ce’ Reedtz and Óscar ‘Mixwell’ Cañellas came forward and agreed to Summit’s tweet.
They validated Summit by implying CS:GO isn’t a good game for content creators as it is currently over-saturated by tournaments. CS:GO has been on a steady decline of viewership despite the increase in the number of hours streamed.
ALSO READ: Valorant’s Edge Over CSGO
Conclusion
I believe that a lot of players also feel the same way after playing this game for a decent amount of hours. I honestly treat Valorant as over-hype just like Apex Legends. Although a lot of pros have moved to Valorant, I feel nothing will change for CS:GO. CS:GO didn’t care at all and people will just replace the biggest players with no problems. And I think that when the hype element of Valorant will die, which eventually will happen at some point. CS:GO can either make a very smart move by releasing Source 2 engine.
