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Twitch’s catch-all “Just Chatting” category has surpassed both League of Legends and Fortnite for the second week in a row.
League of Legends viewership declines due to the game’s World Championship nearing its conclusion. Last weekend saw just two total matches played in the semifinal round compared with four quarterfinal matches the previous week. With fewer matches to play, peak viewership will increase, but hours watched will fall.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare holds strong in its second week after release.
The following content is ranked according to the total number of hours watched on Twitch from Monday to the following Sunday, with data compiled using TEO Access.
It’s Cool, We’re Just Chatting
While Twitch has made several efforts to expand its focus beyond pure gameplay broadcasts, the Just Chatting category has been by far the most successful. Not only are there a host of channels using the category to host talk shows, debates, and podcasts, but many streamers also leverage Just Chatting as an opportunity to create focused community engagement opportunities. The most prominent users of the category also include some of the biggest gameplay streamers such as Tim “Timthetatman” Betar and Saqib “Lirik” Zahid.
Having a category that clearly denotes when a streamer is in “community engagement mode” as opposed to streaming a game, allows for these influencers to expand the scope of their brand, to change the tone of their broadcast when they want to engage with their audience in a different way.
The Just Chatting category has grown steadily on Twitch over the last year, and is frequently in the top 3 forms of content on the platform. For the last two months, it has claimed the top spot nearly every week, averaging over 26M hours watched.
New Call of Duty Sees Minimal Decline
Just like in the film industry, video games tend to see a significant drop in viewership in the second week after release. For example. World of Warcraft Classic’s launch helped the popular PC title generate 41.64M hours watched in its first week. That number dropped to 24.24M the following week, a nearly 42% decline.
While Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s launch didn’t come close to those massive launch numbers, it looks as though the game may have a much slower burn. Viewership dropped just 10.27% to 9.44M hours watched in its second week. The game’s ability to maintain a dedicated audience will be critical as there are still nearly three months to go before the launch of the Call of Duty League. The larger the active viewership for the franchise’s latest entry, the greater the pool of potential viewers to build from for its new esports initiative.
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