From December 29th to January 7th, Escape From Tarkov held its traditional Christmas event, which brought several pleasant surprises to fans. During the New Year holidays, developers offered a 25% discount on purchases; additionally, gamers had the opportunity to receive in-game items and other prizes by watching Twitch broadcasts of the game.
The New Year's event has become a welcomed tradition in the Escape From Tarkov community. Each year, the game developers curate an entertaining program of streams on the official battlestategames channel on Twitch, featuring mini-tournaments, interviews with players and streamers, podcasts, show matches, and other activities.
Throughout the entire event, Twitch Drops were also distributed: viewers received in-game items (weapons, equipment, etc.) for watching Escape From Tarkov broadcasts. In the initial days of the event, rewards were available only on specific channels, while on the final day, Drops were accessible at any Escape From Tarkov Twitch stream.
Escape From Tarkov Christmas Event Viewership Statistics
Many popular Twitch streamers took part in the Christmas event of Escape From Tarkov. The most viewed channel was the one of Australian streamer Pestily: he amassed 4.8 million Hours Watched during the event. Interestingly, Pestily also hosted a marathon during the event and also gave away gaming computers to viewers, which significantly impacted the popularity of his channel.
In the top three by watch time metric were also LVNDMARK and Shroud. The channel HUNTPremier secured the fifth position, featuring broadcasts of esports mini-tournaments on the new map of Escape From Tarkov: Arena (more details about it can be found here). The official BattlestateGames channel landed in the eighth spot in the overall rankings with 1.1 million HW.
The most popular channels of Escape From Tarkov Christmas Event
Among other top content creators, summit1g, LIRIK, Papaplatte, Trey24k, and others also deserve mention. Let us also highlight the streamer Gingy From the USA: she became the only female in the top ranks based on watch hours and peak online viewership.
Speaking of concurrent viewership, Pestily gathered the largest audience during the event. His broadcast of December 29th was simultaneously watched by over 138.9K Peak Viewers. He became the sole Escape from Tarkov Twitch streamer whose channel attracted over 100K viewers during the event.
Comparison with previous events
The distribution of drops during the 2023 Christmas event didn't differ in format from the similar giveaway the previous year: the conditions for receiving rewards and even the duration of the promotion remained the same. However, there was a significant difference in terms of audience reach. For instance, the New Year's event in 2022 generated 87.6 million HW on Twitch, while this figure decreased by 32% in 2023. Peak online viewership also dropped by 30%, and the number of channels at its peak decreased from 5.7K to 3.6K.
In terms of all the key parameters, the 2023 New Year's event not only fell short compared to the previous one (which was among the best) but also turned out to be one of the weakest in recent years. Essentially, it ended up on par with the 2020 event when developers were just starting to organize such promotions.
Despite lower viewership compared to previous iterations, Escape From Tarkov became the most popular game on Twitch from December 29th to January 7th, accumulating 59.8 million HW. It secured the second position in the overall platform ranking, trailing only behind the Just Chatting, the category that's always pulling the most impressive numbers. For comparison, in the period just before the event (from December 18th to 28th), Escape from Tarkov had 6.2 million HW and held the 14th position in the rankings.
Despite the decline in audience reach, the in-game Christmas event still significantly boosted Escape From Tarkov's standings in live streaming. On the other hand, developers might consider introducing some innovations to maintain viewers' interest during the next event.
