Valorant is old wine and Call of Duty has finally woken up

Valorant and Call of Duty: Warzone are currently the trend. But does that also mean sustainable success?

You'd think Valorant had already defeated Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Because the new multiplayer shooter by League of Legends developer Riot Games is currently being discussed up and down. But Riot is not there yet, Valorant is at the beginning of a long journey.

Call of Duty has it behind it: after eons of the annual new multiplayer developments, CoD: Warzone is now a Free2Play spin-off that already has 50 million players and is closely linked to the "buyable" CoD. Is this a milestone for the series – or just the next Apex Legends, a temporary high-altitude flight that will soon shrink again?

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In short: where are the multiplayer shooters going?

It's clear that the star of the classic Battle Royale à la PUBG and Fortnite is sinking – but where does that come from? And how does Rainbow Six: Siege and the PvE-heavy Overwatch 2 fit in there? Michael Graf talks about this with two guests:

• Rene Heuser pays tribute to Riot Games' attack on counter-strike respect, but does not find Valorant brave enough. Call of Duty is currently daring more, he says.
• Philipp Elsner already sees clear signs of success at Valorant because it combines two trends of the past few years that can be seen in other games.

At its core, however, the success of a multiplayer shooter depends primarily on the streamers. If you can get the stars excited about Twitch & Co., that's half the battle. But not a guarantee for long-term flights of fancy, because the streamers can drop a game just as quickly.

Finally, we will focus on the Battlefield topic: How can a possible Battlefield 6 still exist in the current multiplayer environment? René and Micha have very different opinions.