If you’re a gamer you’ve heard of the hot new game Valorant. Even tho it’s only in closed beta it’s immensely popular and here’s why.

You have to watch a Twitch stream of valorant being played for 2 hours before you’re eligble for a beta key. This is pure genius. Take myself for example, I’m not a twitch fan but all my friends wanted to play this new game. So I had to fire up twitch and watch some streams, something I thought I would never do. This is a win for Twitch, they get more people watching streams and lots of new people to there site, like yours truly. Streamers are also winners. All of a sudden they have people looking for a beta key so they get loads of new viewers. And the final brilliant point of this whole system is that the people watching the streams hopeing for a key are getting familiar with the game before they even play it. That way they aren’t just flying totally blind into a new game. The whole limited amount of people also creates exclusivity. So Twitch wins, streamers win, and the actual game wins.

The final thing that valorant is doing right at this point is that the beta actually works. It had its hiccups (the anticheat seems touchy) but overall it’s working well. So many games are rushed into beta way to quick and die on the vine. The only question now is if Valorant will stick around? I sure hope so