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The early success of League of Legends’ 
new auto-battler game mode called Teamfight Tactics has resulted in a significant decline in Twitch viewership for LoL’s traditional mode as viewers veer toward the strategy-based game.
Teamfight Tactics, which is only in beta testing, broke out as the dominant force in an up-and-coming category of strategy games called auto-battlers which began in earnest with Drodo Studio’s Dota 2 mod, Dota Auto Chess.
The strategic elements of the game attracted the interest of influencers known for playing online card games like Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering Arena , but it hadn’t yet pulled the sort of weight that would make it a top form of content on Twitch.
With the power of Riot Games and the League of Legends IP behind it, TFT has not only taken over the hot new gaming genre, but it’s also managed to establish itself as a top form of content on Twitch, at least for now.
While the new game has seen consistent success thus far in its life on Twitch, it’d be amiss to declare it the “next big thing” this early in its life. In February, EA’s take on the battle royale genre, Apex Legends , not only made waves, but dominated Twitch in ways that not even Fortnite could during its climax in 2018.
Related Article: League of Legends’ Teamfight Tactics Takes Auto-Battler Popularity to the Next Level on Twitch
Apex Legends was the only game so far this year to produce 30M hours watched in a single week, and it managed to pull off the feat multiple weeks in a row. However, just about a month after release, Apex Legends’ viewership began to decline as popular streamers moved back to playing Fortnite and the Grand Theft Auto V role play scene on Twitch began to grow.
Despite immense success out of the gate, Apex Legends ended up just being a fleeting trend in the ever-changing Twitch ecosystem that only seems to have room for a short list of established titles with substantial staying power.
What makes TFT different though? Why could we potentially be witnessing the birth of a dominating force on Twitch?
For starters, TFT has carved out a space that didn’t previously exist. Along with with Auto Chess, and Valve’s own entry in the genre called Dota Underlords , this new strategy game is unlike the vast majority of titles that make their way to Twitch.
In 2018, numerous developers spent massive amounts of resources in an attempt to develop the next popular game in the battle royale genre. The multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) genre has had an established hierarchy on Twitch for years with League of Legends and Dota 2 at the top, but the newer battle royale games were a volatile part of Twitch. In 2017, PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS started to gain steam as a leader, but last year, the meteoric rise of Epic Games’ cartoonish battle royale game Fortnite stole the show.
From that point, developers looked to establish their own niche that could revolutionize the battle royale genre and get a piece of the space that PUBG and Fortnite were cultivating. With Apex Legends as a strong example of why that doesn’t necessarily work as a long-term strategy, those titles have tended to only see short-term success, if any at all.
Related Article: Riot Announces First Official Teamfight Tactics Tournament Through Twitch Rivals
TFT is a part of a genre that isn’t established though. It’s completely new to the larger community of Twitch viewers. So to put it plainly, there is no true precedent for what an auto-battler can or should do as an influencer-based form of content on Twitch like there was for battle royale games.
The second element of TFT’s success that has the potential to assist it in becoming a premier form of content on Twitch is the already established nature of the developer and game that it’s associated with. Technically speaking TFT isn’t its own stand-alone game. It’s a game mode in LoL, and its connection to Riot Games’ title has helped it attract much of the game’s viewership in a way that’s almost cannibalized Riot Games’ top title.
Since testing of TFT began, not only has it shown itself to popular among other Twitch content, but it has also caused a slip in viewership for LoL as some of its top influencers, led by Korean streamer “Handongsuk,” began playing TFT.
While the second part of this equation could easily end up similarly to the situation between Fortnite and Apex Legends, the distinctions between LoL and TFT as games in two separate genres supports the idea that viewers and influencers may not be as willing to move back to LoL as soon as new content releases or a new season starts.
It’s still way too soon to say that TFT will be a top form of content on Twitch longterm. However, the evidence we have so far suggests that it will at the very least lead the new auto-battler genre, and if it maintains the current viewership that it’s managed to take from LoL, it has the potential to be much more.
