"It is dead."
This is what fans and players of the massively popular shooter builder, Fortnite, have been hearing for the best part of three years. If that wasn't enough, there were also mixed feelings within the community about changes within the game — some major — like the removal of highly-sought-after weapons, a complete change of the map, and an adherence to a kind of cinematic plot and universe that was until recently only seen in other media forms like comics and movies.
The bevy of collaborations and crossovers, albeit highly successful, was also not to the liking of fans of the original game, those who know about its roots and what it stands for more than anyone else or any numbers could ascertain. With all this going on, fans and gamers — egged on no less by certain sections of the media and especially those of more famous and successful contemporaries like Valorant, PUBG, and Apex Legends — took great pleasure in denouncing Epic Games' industry-defining product as finished.
Unfortunately for Fortnite lovers, the numbers on Twitch were not exactly helping, particularly those coming from the viewership board. Between January 1 and October 31 this year, the game saw drops of 20%, 50%, and 19% in its watch time, peak concurrent viewership, and average online viewership, respectively, compared to the same period in 2022. Moreover, the number of peak channels fell by a whopping 82%, meaning the game was losing audiences at a worrying rate during the first ten months of 2023.
There were shoots of positivity, of course, for a game this massive, as the peak channels were still in the top five among games on the purple platform. It was even better for the average channels metric, where it was on top and saw a growth of 17% compared to the first ten months of 2022. Additionally, it was in the best 15 for Hours Watched, Peak Viewers, and Average Viewers, with Epic Games promising to bring in updates and content that would bring it back to the forefront of the gaming community.
Fortnite OG season takes internet by storm
Little did we know that this change would be one that would literally go back to the foundations of the battle royale offering, one that would break records half a decade after its release. On November 3, the developer released the much-hyped Fortnite OG season, which would bring back items, weapons, and vehicles from the first few chapters and give nostalgic fans a chance to take a trip (and play) down memory lane.
On its release day, Fortnite commanded the eyes of over a fifth of the total audience on Twitch and achieved its highest peak all year. OG content creator Ninja was a big reason for this rise, with his Spanish, French, and German colleagues especially helping paint the platform red.
While this initial excitement was obviously not sustainable, the game has continued to grab the attention of viewers, players, and streamers. Between November 3 and 7, it was the second most watched and popular category on the Amazon-owned site, seeing growths of 359% and 340% in these metrics from the preceding five days.
Most viewed and popular games on Twitch over the first five days of the new season’s release
Such improvements were also reported by Epic Games, which stated that 44.7M players logged in to play the much-discussed new season on Saturday/Sunday, resulting in over 102M hours of play for Fortnite OG. All this despite many users struggling to log in or getting stuck in queues, with unofficial stats site Fortnite.gg adding that the free-to-play title recorded 6.2M simultaneous players a new record (yet to be corroborated officially).
With more to come for gamers in the next three weeks, there's a chance more records will be created/broken by Fortnite. For those unaware, here's a schedule of what is to come:
- November 3 to 9: Season 5
- November 9 to 16: Season 6
- November 16 to 23: Seasons 7 and 8
- November 23 to December 2: Seasons 9 and X
- December 2: Fortnite OG ends (2nd half of the day)
There was also a spike in the watch time of almost all the major languages the game is broadcasted in. English reached an almost two-year high in its watch time, while the likes of Spanish (eight months), German (20 months), French (highest HW since stats collection started), and Portuguese (all-time high) also saw such high numbers after pretty lengthy gaps.
Of course, any positives or negatives that these languages, or the game itself, for that matter, witness are influenced a lot by streamers. Unsurprisingly, many of the most prominent names jumped on the Fortnite bandwagon as soon as they could, and that can be seen in the stats.
Most watched and popular individual channels for some of the more popular languages
As already mentioned, Ninja was one of the biggest influencers to give the title a right go, and he seemed to enjoy what he experienced quite a lot. He has racked up 1.7M HW between November 1 and 7, the most of any internet star and the highest for any English-speaking entrant.
The likes of Gotaga, TheGrefg, alanzoka, eliasn97, IlloJuan, MontanaBlack88, and auronplay have all been pretty busy playing the new season and giving fans insights into what's new and what the same from the initial chapters. All this means that, at the time of writing, 8.3K channels, which is 10% of all handles on Twitch, are currently watching the game in some capacity, a response few games can match once in their lifespans, let alone multiple times, as Fortnite has done.
In essence, the hype created by the game’s return to its roots was at its highest on the weekend of its release, i.e., the first two days after the new season came out. The launch day saw its watch time recorded a 116% increase compared to the previous day’s complete stats. Moreover, Fortnite recorded a 700% higher Peak Channels figure than League of Legends, which is quite the feat considering the Worlds 2023 is ongoing.
Things have expectedly slowed down over the next two or three days, with drops in almost all the important metrics as fans and content creators get a hang of what's new and unique. With each new week, though, a shortened version of a new chapter from the original season will be made available, so readers can expect this sort of up-and-down behavior of its viewership numbers over the next 21 days.
Whether you are a fan, skeptic, or neutral, the next few weeks are going to be a fun watch, with so much nostalgia yet to come and fans and streamers salivating at the prospect of digging into whatever content Epic Games offers them. It's definitely the era of the Victory Royale, and we're just glad to be part of it, watching it unfold like it were 2018 all over again.
