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Fortnite viewership on Twitch suffered last week as many top influencers went offline and traveled to Los Angeles for the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).
Meanwhile, the Special Events category benefitted from gaming companies using Twitch to display upcoming video game products and content.
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.
People Matter
If there was ever a question about how important top influencers are to Fortnite viewership on Twitch, they could be put to rest after this week. With top influencers such as Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, Ben “DrLupo” Lupo, Tim “TimTheTatman” Betar, and Nick “NickMercs” Kolcheff all at E3 instead of streaming, the title saw a huge drop in hours watched for the week.
Along with a lack of airtime by influential streamers, Epic Games’ World Cup qualifiers also took the week off knowing that many of its top competitors wouldn’t be able to participate because of travel related to E3. World Cup qualifying days have been some of the most-watched for Fortnite since the process began in April.
What’s New?
Not only did E3 cause a slump in viewership for Fortnite, but it also gave a huge boost to a Twitch category that is often forgotten about—Special Events. Last week the category pulled together 7M hours watched for the opening conferences before E3, and this week, it generated 9M hours watched for the expo itself.
While a large portion of the hours watched for the category came from Twitch’s main official channel, numerous personality streamers who couldn’t make it out to the event like Sebastian “Forsen” Fors and Félix “xQc” Lengyel pulled in sizeable viewership for the category by co-streaming events with their own commentary.
Wearing Off?
After a viewership decline for the World of Warcraft Classic beta last week due in part to its top streamer, Chance “Sodapoppin” Morris, taking a leave of absence for a family vacation, WoW has continued to see a decline in total hours watched.
Even though there’s been an increase in some of the content that beta testers can access, a fatigue has come across viewers and streamers of the title that could be a product of the fact that the game is still in the closed beta phase.
Because of the nature of massively multiplayer online games, the dip in viewership could be in part due to fatigue by viewers and streamers that are bored of beta testing the game and instead are anticipating the full release of the game and all of its content.
