CS:GO vs Valorant vs Call of Duty: Which FPS Game Dominated 2022?

First-person shooters (FPS) simply refuse to die. We have seen classic arena shooters evolve into hero shooters and now we have battle royales, a genre that has been dominating gaming for years. But which FPS is number one in terms of viewership? Let’s find out.

Valorant and CS:GO outclassed every other shooter in terms of viewership

Escharts recently posted its annual statistics which highlight viewership figures of the final tournaments of the official 2022 seasons. Valorant Champions 2022 broke previous viewership records for the game but CS:GO and Free Fire dropped in viewership. The two biggest FPS events of 2022 were CS:GO’s IEM Rio Major 2022 which had over 1.4 Million peak viewers, and Valorant Champions 2022 with over 1.5 Million peak viewers.

The number three spot goes to Apex Legends, which saw peak viewership of over 632,000 viewers. No other FPS title broke the 400,000 mark. While CS:GO and Valorant’s numbers are mighty impressive, fans have begun to expect both titles to deliver in terms of the quality of competition and the entertainment value. Apex Legends has been growing tremendously in recent years and Apex Legends Global Series 2022 was the game’s return to LAN events following COVID.

Rainbow Six Invitational for the current competitive season has not commenced yet and it is scheduled to take place in early 2023 which makes the viewer count of over 121,000 peak viewers look inaccurate. We expect it to take over Halo once the world championship takes place and there is also a lot of anticipation behind Ubisoft and BLAST’s partnership for future events. 

Call of Duty and Overwatch’s viewerships this year are similar to previous years and they continue to generate respectable viewership. The two shockers on the list are Free Fire and Halo. Free Fire had exceptionally high peak viewership with 2021’s World Series getting over 5.4 Million peak viewers. This year, the World Series in Bangkok reached just over 350,000 viewers in comparison.

Halo on the other hand had a lot of controversies surrounding it. 343 Industries removed crowdfunding from the prize pool right before the world championship, which upset a lot of pros and the lack of in-game updates and missing features have contributed to the decline in the game’s popularity.