The most recent blow to OWL is the loss of one of its top players to Valorant. Straight up just lost passion for the game. Compared to February 2019, where Activision Blizzard landed a deal (opens in new tab) to broadcast OWL on ESPN and Disney XD, things aren't looking quite as rosey in 2020. Overwatch League viewership has been noticeably lower since OWL's exclusivity deal with YouTube. There are also concerns about Overwatch's long term health. The introduction of hero pools has also led to frustration in the Overwatch League as Blizzard attempts to shake up the meta more regularly. It's community is acutely aware of its diminishing player count and long queue times for matches. There's a lot of confusion surrounding the current health of Overwatch.
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Talented professional players with a proven record elsewhere are therefore promising candidates for Valorant's emerging esports ecosystem. Many of the skills these pros spend hours sharpening every day are transferable to the new free-to-play behemoth. It also helps that Valorants's mechanics feel very familiar to CS:GO and Overwatch players. Of course, it's easy to understand why players may want to temporarily switch to streaming Valorant, for all the reasons stated above. Over the past couple of months, a selection of professional CS:GO and Overwatch players have announced their departure from their respective leagues. It's popularity has even started to disrupt the esports scenes in other games. Streaming Valorant appears to be a lucrative move for streamers with sizable audiences. Despite cooling off over time, this exclusivity has hooked thousands of people, with Valorant continuing to maintain its top-ten spot on Twitch's browse page. These codes-distributed to viewers at random-felt like gold dust in the opening weeks, with Valorant accounts selling for as much as $150 (opens in new tab) on eBay at the height of the hype. Viewer counts soared for the most popular Twitch streamers as they pivoted to Valorant and enabled key drops on their channels.
Valorant's presence on Twitch has been near impossible to avoid, thanks to its beta key drop integration. Riot's marketing strategy has undoubtedly helped to fuel the fire.