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World of Warcraft maintains its spot at the top of Twitch despite a sizeable drop in hours watched from the previous week when Classic launched.
Meanwhile, other influencer-driven games like Grand Theft Auto V and Fortnite see viewership statistics suffer following the massively multiplayer online game’s latest 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.
This Means Warcraft
World of Warcraft set records for the year on Twitch with 47.1M hours watched two weeks ago, and though the game didn’t see nearly as high viewership this past week, it was still strong enough to sit far ahead of all other forms of content.
While Classic’s launch on Aug. 26 generated massive hours watched totals for WoW immediately, the game has seen its viewership settle in a spot that would still keep it as Twitch’s top content. After seeing a decline in hours watched from Aug. 27-Sept. 4, WoW has seen its hours watched total hover around 3.5-3.8M each of the past five days.
It’s unclear if that recent consistent viewership will have any sort of longevity, but with streamers finally returning to a more normalized schedule after marathoning the game for much of its release week, there’s evidence to suggest that viewership of Classic could have some legs to it.
Something to Steal
After numerous high-profile streamers helped the explosion of Grand Theft Auto V earlier this year, the game saw consistent success, despite those top-ranked streamers moving to different games. Role-playing personalities like “Vader” (real name unknown) leveraged the game’s new status to attract a sizeable audience on Twitch, but with so much attention being paid to the release of WoW Classic, the game has suffered some in the past couple of weeks.
Jaryd “Summit1g” Lazar continued to lead all GTA streamers when he played the game, but there are a few other personalities who are able to sustain 8-11K concurrent viewers. However, the past two weeks’ hours watched total for the game is down significantly from what it was averaging earlier in August. From Aug. 26, when Classic came out, until Sunday, GTA had 21.2M hours watched. The two weeks before Classic’s launch, the game had 28.2M hours watched.
Build it Up, Break it Down
Fortnite is another game that has seen viewership suffer due to the release of Classic, but its stats can be more directly attributed to influencers moving from Fortnite to WoW. The two weeks prior to Classic’s release, Fortnite generated 32.8M hours watched. In the past two weeks, the battle royale title had just 26.8M.
Before Classic’s release, broadcast personalities like Tim “TimTheTatman” Betar and Ben “DrLupo” Lupo were among the top 10 most-watched Fortnite streamers on Twitch. However, in the past two weeks, Betar has transitioned to being one of the top 5 most-watched WoW streamers, and Lupo has recorded 97 hours of airtime on the game with nearly 500K hours watched as well.
