Valorant Celebrates One Year Since Release

It has been a year and a day since the release of Valorant. Riot’s highly anticipated first person shooter has taken the industry by storm. Valorant celebrates one year since since disrupting one of the oldest esports genre. I have been playing the game on and off for the last year. Being perfectly honest this is the first FPS game that does not make me dizzy even after playing for 4 hours. But my experience is mostly organizing tournaments.

One month after the release of the game we actually held our first community tournament. The prize pool we just Php 8,000.00 back then this was the highest cast prize. Teams were actually tripping over each other just to get into the tournament. Then came the explosion. After the initial community tournaments, Valrant burst into the esports scene like a bat out of hell. There were four or five tournament happening each week. Some tournament were even happening at the same time.

Then came the money. There we re a lot of early adaptors and sponsors o the tournament scene and the prize pool exploded. This caught the attention of the attention of the professional teams. Traditional powerhouses like Bren Esports, 5 Peaks and Execration. New upstart teams like Hashira, 6045 Pirates. The the tournaments grew even bigger.

At the start of the yeat the Valorant Challengers Tournament came online. This is the official Riot Games Valorant Tournament. The Professional tour so to speak. Teams new and old are now joining the tournaments trying get their shot for fame and fortune.

In my opinion Valorant has truly delivered as a game, but it also disrupted the FPS Esports scene. For organizations like Fulcrum Esports, it has been our entry onto the local tournament scene. It gave us the opportunity to play with the big boy orgs of esports.