Here’s How You Can Get A Code To Play The ‘Valorant’ Beta

Here’s How You Can Get A Code To Play The ‘Valorant’ Beta

Is 1.2 million viewers a lot? It seems like a lot. The Valorant beta only went live this morning, but it’s already drawing in massive numbers of viewers on Twitch, hitting up to 1 million shortly after going live and still climbing from there. Riot Games’ upcoming shooter has a focus of hype for weeks, and now it appears that a quarantined gaming population is hungry for some gameplay of what Riot is hoping will be the next big thing in esports. You can’t play unless you’ve got a code, however.

Usually you get codes from giveaways, lotteries and various other sources, but Riot is going about this in an interesting way. It’s giving codes away through Twitch streams. So if you want to get a code, first you need a Twitch account and a Riot account, both of which you probably already have if you’re this excited for the beta. Then, you need to link those accounts.

After that, you need to watch some Valorant streams. Riot is only giving out streams through specific streamers, but a bunch of the top streamers right now are saying that they’re dropping codes in their streams. Codes will be randomly awarded to people watching those streams, so watch for a chance. It’s not clear at this moment if it’s totally random or if the streamers themselves will have a chance to dish some out.

It’s a smart tactic, and it definitely has something to do with Valorant’s massive Twitch numbers this morning: people are trying to get codes, and watching Twitch is the only way to get it. But the hype also feels like its real—I doubt many other games could put up numbers like this under any circumstances.

Valorant combines the hero shooter abilities of a game like Over watch with the twitchy, fast-paced action of Counter Strike: Global Offensive. Riot made its name with League of Legends and e-sports, so its unsurprising that it’s looking to get lighting to strike twice by going after the competitive crowd again. We’ll see what happens over the next few days. In the meantime, watch some streams.