VALORANT’s viewership decline is far more in line with typical release trends than its record-shattering rise to prominence, further highlighting the power of limiting access and encouraging viewership through drops.
Meanwhile, the game’s main competitor, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive continues to lead Twitch esports viewership during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Twitch’s Top Channel – Gaules
Counter-Strike is a popular esport throughout the world, particularly in places like Europe and Brazil. Similar to how Russian-language broadcasts of Dota 2 esports routinely perform well alongside their English counterparts, the Portugese-language streams of CS:GO events hosted on the channel run by Alexandre “Gaules” Borba routinely fall just below the viewership totals of English channels.
CS:GO esports has been performing exceptionally well during the pandemic, and this week, Borba locked in a position as the number one channel on Twitch, generating 3.82M hours watched. This was accomplished by borrowing a page from the VALORANT streamer playbook and keeping his channel running 24/7. Fortunately for Borba, with no drops to give away his 24-hour streams do not violate Twitch policies.
Twitch’s Top Content – Just Chatting
As discussed last week, Just Chatting’s role as a catch-all category lends itself well to high hours watched each week. Couple that with a quiet period for esports and the rise in non-gaming content on Twitch, and you have a situation perfectly suited to see Just Chatting dominate the rankings.
The category well out-paced its most common rivals in Fortnite and League of Legends by more than 10M hours watched, reaching 42.14M – a figure in the same league as some of the later weeks of VALORANT’s reign. With more and more influencers leveraging the category for a portion or the entirety of their content, it would not be surprising if Just Chatting became the premier category going forward, perhaps only supplanted by the latest major new releases.
