Through the early weeks of August, Battlefield 6 delighted shooter fans with two open betas and an early access period. Hundreds of thousands tried out the game themselves, and many more tuned in to action online. The viewership for the title was also significantly boosted by Twitch Drops; during the early access period, keys were available to try the game by watching various Twitch streamers.
Although the vast amount of viewership for Battlefield 6’s betas came from Twitch, viewership on YouTube Gaming and Kick boosted total watch time over 32,000,000 Hours Watched (HW). Twitch also recorded the top Peak Viewers (PV) of 582,126 for the game, while YouTube Live reached just shy of 160,000 PV and Kick reached 94,213 at best. While these platforms could not match the power of Twitch, fuelled by Twitch Drops, YouTube and Kick still contributed significantly to the overall coverage of Battlefield 6 in livestreaming.
In total, Twitch was accountable for 76.4% of the total watch time for BF6, and also contributed a majority share of the total Unique Channels; across all early access periods, more than 9,200 total channels covered Battlefield 6 gameplay to at least a decently sized audience. A lot of these channels covered the titles multiple times, choosing to come back to streaming the title after the first betas.
American streamer Timothy “TimTheTatman” Betar was one of the prime benefactors of the event, generating millions of hours watch time throughout the early access period and reaching over 200,000 peak concurrent viewers. Twitch Drops can often lift a select number of channels to extreme heights during game events, while also boosting general viewership across the board.
Other top streamers who covered the early access periods include Michael “shroud” Grzesiek, Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag, Saqib “LIRIK” Ali Zahid, Seth “scump” Abner, Jaryd “summit1g” Lazar, Alan “alanzoka” Ferreira, Rubén “Rubius” Doblas, Félix “xQc” Lengyel, Zack “zackrawrr” Hoyt, and many more. The wide appeal of the beta to North American and European audiences meant the vast majority of viewership for Battlefield 6 came from English-language audiences, with small support from other audiences like French, German, and Spanish.
Breaking down the viewership for the Battlefield 6 betas and early access period, we can see that viewership maintained a decent level throughout, while naturally peaking alongside the early hype wave during its first early access period. In the following open betas, viewership fell steeply on YouTube, but Kick and Twitch maintained strong results for these weekend events.
According to the Steam player-count numbers from SteamDB for Battlefield 6, most tried out the title during its first open beta. Viewership spiked during this shorter beta test at just over 500,000 total concurrent players on Steam, the following second beta managed to reach just over 400,000 for its opening moments, but this slowly tapered off throughout the weekend. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of gamers were excited to try out the game for themselves, promising a strong release for the title.
While the second open beta for Battlefield 6 was slightly longer, spanning from Thursday until the end of the weekend, it recorded the least watch time of the open access periods. Expanding this final beta helped to accumulate enough viewership to at least rival the previous events, but these first-look periods enjoyed too much early hype to be matched.
At peak excitement, on August 8, Battlefield 6 was the most popular category on Twitch, ranking ahead of typical platform titans like Just Chatting, League of Legends, and Counter-Strike. The upcoming shooter may be one of the most popular game releases of the year when it finally arrives in October, keep an eye on the livestreaming industry around this time, as another wave of excitement could drive new peaks for the games and the lucky streamers involved.
