Today marks the one-year anniversary of Riot's entry into the competitive shooter scene, Valorant, and the developer announced that the game is a hit. On average, more than 14 million PC players from around the world log in each month to play this PC-only shooter, and more than 500 million matches have been fought in the game's first year."

For comparison, Counter-Strike: For comparison, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive had just under 27 million players last month, so in one year, Valorant has achieved more than half the player count of the more than 20-year-old series (Counter-Strike was created in 1999 and has gone through several iterations - CS: GO is the most recent, released in 2012). By any metric, that's a lot of momentum.

Riot also celebrated the occasion by announcing Valorant Mobile, although details are scarce. This makes it the only competitive FPS with a mobile version (not Battle Royale).

"One of our top priority goals for this first year was to earn the trust and respect of the global FPS community and to prove that Valorant has always adhered to the fundamentals of a truly worthy competitive tack shooter," said the film's executive producer Anna Donlon said. This is a bit of a theme of Riot's official announcement about the game: highlighting its differences with Valve, the administrators of Global Offensive.

In this respect, Valorant seems to be sound as an esport: according to Riot, the final match of the Valorant Champions Tour last week, Sentinels vs. Fnatic in Reykjavik, had over 1 million simultaneous viewers and an "average audience" of 800,000 exceeded 800,000.

The anniversary will be celebrated in-game for a month, with players receiving various "commemorative digital swag" including free event passes.Valorant is PC Gamer's choice for best multiplayer game of 2020, and Counter-Strike has set the bar so high that even the likes of Counter-Strike have taken notice.