This week will go down as one of the most influential moments in the history of online gaming. At the very least, it will be remembered as the week when Riot Games conquered the internet.

With the VALORANT closed beta coming to servers on April 7, the subsequent days that have followed have consisted of gamers being locked into the game that everyone is talking about. Those who have access are playing the hell out of it, those who don’t are making the game’s viewership numbers on Twitch skyrocket. On Tuesday, the first day of the open beta, the game posted over 1.7 million concurrent viewers on Twitch at one point while the average aggregate number hung out around 800,000. That peak number only dropped to 1.5 million on Wednesday, as the hype surrounding the game was able to transcend into further moments during the week.

Throughout the entire course of the past week, VALORANT has accumulated just about 52,000,000 total hours watched. For reference, that makes up about 13% of all hours watched on Twitch during that period.

What’s even more impressive is that those who weren’t watching VALORANT were probably locked into League of Legends. For the past few days, the LCS has been showcasing Spring Split playoff matches as part of its broadcast schedule, accumulating nearly 33,000,000 more total hours of the Twitch viewerbase. With VALORANT and League sitting atop the livestreaming mountain (and Teamfight Tactics in there somewhere as well with over 5,000,000 total hours watched), Riot Games has claimed a full quarter of Twitch’s total viewer count all to themselves.

And honestly, you shouldn’t expect this to slow down any time soon. Due to the way that VALORANT streams allow viewers a chance to obtain access to the closed beta just by tuning in, it would be fair to assume that anyone in search of beta access would be boosting the game’s viewership statistics – effectively pointing Riot in the best direction possible, as well.

It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to predict Riot holding down the online esports and gaming viewership market for the foreseeable future. League of Legends has been a global force in esports for the better part of a decade, and at least for now, it looks like VALORANT is here to stay.

Photo Credit: Riot Games, VALORANT