Riot’s new competitive shooter VALORANT has thrown a direct challenge at CSGO in a contest to become the greatest first-person shooter. The game combined several elements from CSGO with that of Overwatch and came up with a unique sort of gameplay that got an immense positive response from casual and competitive gamers alike. Besides the gameplay, Riot also provided 128-tick servers, performance optimization for low end rigs, low latency throughout the world and promised to bring a world-class anti-cheat system to VALORANT, making it a fan favourite and giving it a strong edge against CSGO which lacks at all those aspects.
VALORANT wasn’t free from criticism either, streamers like Tfue and summit1g have expressed strong opinions against the game previously. From being called “slow” and “bland” to a “piece of s**t video game“, VALORANT had to endure all sorts of criticism from streamers. Shroud however, seems to be positive about a bright future for the shooter and puts it ahead of CSGO in popularity.
Michael “shroud” Grzesiek is a professional streamer and ex-CSGO pro player who had regularly been seen streaming VALORANT on his Mixer channel. The streamer had previously said that VALORANT is an easier game than CSGO, and that is exactly why he thinks it’ll be more popular among the masses – “Do I think Valorant will overtake CS? Probably. I just think it’s a much easier game to get into. It’s much more pleasing to the eye, a little more casual. Counter-Strike is a bit more hardcore.”
It’s evident that shroud really enjoys playing Riot’s new title since he has been showering VALORANT with compliments recently. He had also mentioned that it was his favourite game of all time and even came up with an agent tier list for the game.
While it’s true that VALORANT had promised things CSGO was lacking at, Valve wasn’t gonna sit back and watch Riot take over their legendary title. Rumours have aroused about Source 2 engine coming to CSGO in near future, possibly around summer – the same time VALORANT is expected to release. HenryG has also recently teased 128-tick servers for matchmaking.
With the constant stream of updates, Valve has pushed into the game ever since VALORANT was announced, fans can certainly expect to see some more surprises coming from the side of Valve. The release of Source 2 and 128-tick servers might just give CSGO enough room to edge past VALORANT in the race to become the most popular competitive shooter.
