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The “Just Chatting” category on Twitch led all channels for the eighth month this year, and the seventh month in a row.
Meanwhile, World of Warcraft Classic drove year-over-year growth for WoW, outperforming last year’s Battle for Azeroth expansion and the first-ever livestreamed “raid race.”
The following content is ranked according to the total number of hours watched on Twitch, from Sept. 1-30, with data compiled using TEO Access.
Year-Over-Year
Fortnite saw another dramatic decrease in viewership on Twitch year-over-year. Along with TwitchCon coming a month earlier than it did in 2018, leading to influencers taking a break from streaming for a period of time, a few other key factors played a role in Fortnite’s year-over-year dip.
Turner “Tfue” Tenney, who was the most-watched streamer on Twitch coming into September, decided to take a break from doing live broadcasts about a week into the month. Prior to his hiatus, Tenney accounted for more than 10% of the game’s viewership on Twitch in 2019.
Additionally, the explosion of World of Warcraft viewership with the release of Classic that came at the end of August took the attention of many influencers who might have otherwise been playing Fortnite.
The same could be said for the beta of Activision’s upcoming Call of Duty game. Even though the beta had less viewership than last year, a number of top broadcasters stopped playing Fortnite for a period of time to take advantage of the limited-time ability to try out CoD before it’s release at the end of October.
Top Content: Just Chatting
Twitch’s “IRL” category was divided into a hodgepodge of more specifically catered categories at the end of September 2018, and since then, its most popular spinoff category, “Just Chatting” has seen consistent growth from the viewership IRL had.
It only makes sense that in the 12th month of being on Twitch, Just Chatting would lead all content on Twitch. However, Just Chatting’s dominance this month doesn’t truly show what the category has become in the year that it has been on Twitch.
So far this year, Just Chatting has led all content on Twitch eight out of nine months. The only month that it didn’t lead was in February, when Apex Legends made the strongest debut on Twitch that any title ever has with multiple weeks of 30M hours watched.
Additionally, no form of content has had as many hours watched on Twitch as Just Chatting in the past 12 months. The category’s 1.11B hours watched from October 2018-September 2019 is more than 200M higher than Fortnite, which sits in second place with 905.8M hours watched.
What’s Trending: World of Warcraft
September served as the first full month for World of Warcraft Classic on Twitch following its launch at the end of August, and as a result, the title was able to secure a position as the most-watched game.
However, as players plowed through the game’s content as quickly as possible, with many influencers having marathon streams to broadcast as much gameplay as possible in the first week or so after Classic launched, a lot of end-game content for the first phase of Classic has already been completed by many players.
While there is no timetable set for when the next phase of WoW Classic content to be released, the ability of influencers like Zack “Asmongold” to consistently mobilize viewers with creative community-driven in-game content has the potential to keep WoW viewership in the top ten, even if it sees a dip in the next month.
