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Comment by impulser_ | Hacker News Reader

eSports trends last long time if the game developers care.

League of Legends still kicking it. Dota2 still kicking it. CSGO still kicking it.

These three been the top eSports games for over a decade now.

Those are exceptions. Even the most dedicated devs cannot control the wider market or gamer interest. While they can build and cater to communities people will inevitably leave or age out.

And markets are getting crowded. Select older brands have some nostalgia factor propping them up too.

CSGO is getting wrecked by Valorant. It’s basically dead in the water in the US and will be out internationally soon too. CSGO is stuck in the past, can’t make obvious quality of life improvements, and Valorant is polished in a way that I’ve never seen so many women get into a competitive video game.

Wait, what?

https://steamcharts.com/app/730#All

Where on that chart is CSGO getting wrecked?

I don't know about steam but if you look at the twitch numbers (which probably correlate more with esport from a pro/money perspective) CSGO does look to be declining since its peak in 2020[0] (which I'd wager was due to some huge event or the pandemic) and is consistently less popular than Valorant.

0. https://twitchtracker.com/games/32399

Apr. 2020 was peak daily players, 857k, the exact month Valorant Beta was released. They're trending down to 563k as of the last 30 days, down 34% in just 2 years. Valorant is posting 1.5m and has only been trending upwards. Maybe "dead" is exaggerative but long term trend is clear with Riot's compared to Valve's stewardship.

I have no idea how you can come to that conclusion based on that data.

valorant is too new of a game to tell, overwatch was pretty big back in the day too

apr 2020 was peak daily players because of lockdowns.

Was CS ever popular in the US? I thought the US was always more into Call of Duty.

The Call of Duty competetive scene is basically nonexistent and probably even beat by games such as Farming Simulator, which has more active esports teams.

Call of Duty was for casuals and CS was for tryhards. Yes, CoD was more popular because of that.

CS was very popular in the US twenty years ago.

>if the game developers care.

Or, in the case of Super Smash Brothers Melee, if the game developers spend a decade trying to kill the scene but it just won't die.

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