Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree came out on June 21, and suffice to say, it has made quite the mark. The game has already undergone a second wind among viewers and content creators on Twitch, with the announcement of its first expansion ensuring it shot to the top of the purple platform's game rankings.
That success has continued five days into the DLC's release, with Elden Ring continuing to rule the viewership roost. Not only has it continued to be the most watched and popular game on Twitch, but it has also surpassed the Just Chatting genre to emerge as the top category by both metrics between June 21 and 26, which is not an easy feat.
Leading the charge, as has been his motive since the start of the year, is Kai Cenat, who has been on a mission to take the game to as many viewers as possible. He has racked up 7M Hours Watched over the last six days while also emerging as by far the game's most popular streamer, becoming the only one to surpass the 100K Peak Viewers mark.
What has helped is that he conducted another Elden Ring marathon for the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, completing it in five days. It took 1070 deaths over 99 hours, 67 hours less than his earlier continuous playthrough of the base game that first brought the game back into the limelight on the Amazon-owned streaming service.
What made these '100+ hour live streams' so brutal yet captivating to watch for his fans was that just killing the expansion's final boss ended up becoming a multi-day struggle. It even saw the American bring in a therapist after he started getting frustrated at his inability to beat Radahn, who took around half of his entire marathon time to beat.
Many others have also tried to do marathon runs in a game that is known to be soul-crushingly hard in terms of combat and gameplay. Such has been the difficulty of this game that many users have vented their frustrations via the reviews section on Steam, where it has fallen to a 'Mixed' rating after over 50K submissions.
Most recently, Kai Cenat's good friend Jynxzi attempted something similar but ended up quitting the exercise 49 hours in, much to the amusement of the former, who took the opportunity to roast his mate on social media as well. After all, the latter had given him a lot of grief during their prior sessions playing Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, going as far as to call Kai one of the worst players of the shooter.
Jynxzi has since gone back to live broadcasting his favorite game, Rainbow Six Siege, but other prominent names have also been giving the DLC a try. One of them is caseoh, another good friend of Kai Cenat who has seen his viewership soar since beginning his own playthrough streams of the FromSoftware game.
In fact, caseoh’s first live stream of Elden Ring since the expansion's release ended up becoming his most-watched one ever, hitting 656K HW. He was happy to play just that one session, which lasted around 12 hours and 45 minutes, before deciding he had enough and wasn't going through the pain of finishing the entire pack.
It is not just the American streamers who have been hooked to Elden Ring, with the top ten list of most-watched creators including high-profile names from Brazil, Spain, and Germany. Rubius, one of the most followed stars on Twitch, has so far notched 770K HW for the game, with IlloJuan also figuring in the top 15 after notching 461K HW.
HandOfBlood has led the charge for German audiences so far and has seen his watch time rise by 352%. Part of the INSTINCT3 team on the purple platform, he has also reached the final boss stage but has been unable to neat it so far, so it will be worth keeping an eye out for his broadcasts for any progress on that front.
Portuguese viewers have majorly tuned into alanzoka's streams to catch the legendary game's new DLC. The Brazilian megastar has also seen his Hours Watched figures shoot up as a result of playing the game, helped by the fact that these live playthroughs have ended as his most-watched broadcasts this year by some distance.
Even VTubers like ironmouse have been busy trying out the expansion to see how far they can go and explore the world of Lands Between and The Realm of Shadow. She has invested quite a heavy amount of time into the game to emerge as the last creator to pass the 600K HW mark among online stars streaming Elden Ring between June 21 and 26.
On a side note, YouTube star Ludwig also announced an Elden Ring marathon on June 21 to rival Kai Cenat. It was supposed to be one continuous broadcast that would only stop when he beat Radahn, and he hit a similar problem. The final boss proved to be a challenge for the American megastar as well, but he finally conquered it after almost 57 hours and 858 deaths, with the live stream lasting until June 24.
Soon after his success, Twitch creator Stanz decided to take up the challenge, labeling his stream from Juen 24 as 'If Ludwig can do it I can do it.' However, after around 90 minutes of playing, he decided enough was enough and did not go back to playing the game.
It remains to be seen which other internet personalities continue to play the game and how long it reigns supreme atop the Twitch game charts. Perhaps more streamers will decide to do marathons to beat this notoriously difficult action role-playing game, and if that is the case, it will be worth keeping an eye out on Streams Charts June monthly rankings.
