Earlier today, the closed beta of Valorant began, with roughly 1.6 million people watching play on Twitch, which, as Kotaku notes, is approaching the 1.7 million concurrent viewers recorded by Fortnite during the black hole that ended season 10. Update: Valorant has since reached 1.7 million views.

One of the reasons for Valorant's huge success on Twitch may be Riot's method of distributing closed beta keys: instead of randomly handing them out to people who ask for them, like CS:GO's Souvenir Item Drop, they are given out to people watching the stream. This would naturally increase the number of viewers, as well as the gameplay: according to Dot Esports, eager Valorantineers have linked multiple Riot and Twitch accounts to increase their chances of getting the keys.

Given that, it will be interesting to see how viewership numbers hold up as keys become more widely available: Riot's other game, League of Legends, remains a huge success, and the studio has been playing LoL for over a decade, Riot has also been very careful with the unveiling of Valorant: there has been hands-on time, but gameplay sharing has been limited to a brief teaser until today and an influencer event last weekend.

Riotant has been very discreet.

It may be some time before Riot begins distributing keys on a large scale: some beta testers are reportedly having trouble logging into the game, and last we checked, Riot is still following up on that trouble. PC Gamer has a few people with access to Valorant and will continue to report on this release phase.

We'll have more on the closed beta soon. While you wait to get your keys, be sure to check out our hero guide for Valorant, an overview of all the badges and rank names, and our thoughts on how the game's hero abilities promise to make it "an exciting game that sets itself apart from CS:GO."