Call of Duty: Warzone had many ups and downs in 2021. The game, being one of the most popular games in the Battle Royale genre, managed to rapidly gain an audience in the first six months of the year and just as quickly lose it by the end of 2021. In a new Streams Charts article, we will tell you how Warzone's viewership has changed, and which streamers contributed the most to the category on Twitch in 2021.
At the end of 2021, Call of Duty: Warzone was in the top 7 categories on Twitch, but began to lose ground by the end of the year. This happened because of the not very successful release of the new map Caldera — gamers and streamers didn’t like the new map much. At the end of January 2022, the game was in 11th place among the platform categories.
Last year, Call of Duty: Warzone amassed 843.34 million Hours Watched and was watched by 97K Average Viewers. The most successful quarter in 2021 for the Battle Royale game was the second one, accounting for more than 33% of total Hours Watched. On April 21, the in-game Warzone Nuke Event, timed to coincide with the release of the new map (Verdansk '84), reached 1.6 million Peak Viewers. The Average Viewers number in the second quarter was 128.78K people.
In December 2021, another Warzone map (Caldera) was released, but it got a negative reaction from the community. As a result, the fourth quarter was the most unsuccessful for the category on Twitch. Peak Viewers number was 453.2K spectators, while the Average Viewers Number was 63K. At the same time, the total Hours Watched of the Call of Duty: Warzone category in that period reached 134.55 million Hours Watched.
More than 57% of Warzone's audience in 2021 was English-speaking viewers. French-language broadcasts accounted for 9% of Hours Watched, and nearly 8% were accumulated by Spanish-language streamers. The ranking of the top-5 languages was rounded out by German (6.8% of HW total) and Italian (5.5% of HW total).
Nick ‘NICKMERCS’ Kolcheff became the most popular Call of Duty: Warzone streamer in 2021. Content creator became a category leader not only in terms of Hours Watched, but also regarding Peak and Average Viewers. He managed to amass 42.39 million Hours Watched streaming Warzone, and the Average Viewers number at his streams was 53.17K spectators. The Peak Viewers number of 371.6K spectators was reached on the April broadcast of the in-game event mentioned above.
In second place in terms of Hours Watched in the category is Swagg. Over the year, viewers spent 28.81 million hours watching his Battle Royale broadcasts. Swagg attracted 96.38K Peak Viewers streaming the launch of the second season of Warzone in February. In this metric, Swagg ranks fourth in the top.
TimTheTatman ranks third in Hours Watched and second in Peak Viewers. It is worth noting that the content creator streamed on Twitch only until the end of August, and then signed an exclusive partnership agreement with YouTube. TimTheTatman accumulated 27.68 million Hours Watched on the Amazon streaming platform. The Peak Viewers number of 152.2K spectators was reached on the Warzone Nuke Event broadcast.
MrSoki ranks third in the top in terms of Peak Viewers in Warzone category, but did not make it to the top in Hours Watched. In a year, he amassed 6.29 million Hours Watched and had 3.74K Average Viewers. On the stream of the April in-game event, the content creator attracted 106.23K Peak Viewers.
Felix ‘xQcOW’ Lengyel, who became the most popular streamer of 2021, is in 10th place regarding Peak Viewers in Warzone. It should be noted that the Canadian streamed the game for slightly less than 9 hours, but amassed 497.4K Hours Watched and had 56.3K Average Viewers. The Peak Viewers number of 66.23K spectators was reached during the regular July broadcast.
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By the end of 2021, Call of Duty: Warzone has lost a considerable portion of the audience. Probably, the situation can improve if in 2022 the developers manage to hold a few more large and successful in-game events like April's Warzone Nuke Event. We should remind you that after Microsoft acquired Activision, there was a rumor that Warzone 2 is in development now. If the information is correct, the second part of the shooter game may be released in 2023.
