The Valorant Closed Beta launched yesterday, with more than 1.7 million peak concurrent viewers on Twitch, breaking the record for most single-day hours watched in a single game on the streaming site. However, the dark side to all this is that the demand is overwhelming the folks at Riot Games, who were not expecting this kind of reception.

On the official website, Riot Games said that they “want to support a stable, competitive, high-fidelity gameplay experience above all, even if that means limiting the number of people we can support for now”.

As of now, Valorant Closed Beta access is granted to beta stream viewers on Twitch, whose total viewing time are tracked. Once they pass a certain threshold of viewing time, they’ll receive an email. The developer said:

“The selection is random to give fairness, but we give a higher ‘weight’ to those of you who have more hours watched of Valorant streams.

This weight gives you a higher chance at being selected but it’s still not guaranteed.

Hours watched also has diminishing returns, so please don’t burn yourself out trying to marathon Valorant streams.”

The immense sudden popularity of the Valorant Closed Beta means that many have started taking advantage of the high demand. A suspiciously high number of Valorant beta accounts are currently available for sale on eBay, with starting prices around US$150, or roughly RM650+.

To combat this issue, Riot Games is “actively looking into account sellers”. Anyone who buys an account for Valorant Closed Beta access will be banned, which they have already done to several offenders, as revealed by the developer via a tweet earlier today.

We’ve banned a pile of VALORANT closed beta account sellers and botters to free up more entitlements. Tracking more. Don’t buy accounts, you might lose them!

— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) April 9, 2020

If you want to play Valorant, you can either watch a ton of it on Twitch, or wait for the eventual release of the full version. It’s not worth it to buy an account just to get banned for good. In the meantime, head on over here for more of our Valorant coverage.