Helldivers 2 catapulted itself to the top of Twitch and the forefront of online culture shortly after the release. The title has enjoyed a massively successful hypewave, and generated well over 40,000,000 Hours Watched since its release. However, the game recently entered the news for negative reasons, as the community pushed back heavily against the announcement that the game would be requiring a connection to a PlayStation Network account for Steam users.
The connection of a PlayStation Network account for Steam users was always intended for the title, but the developers changed this requirement to be optional, due to technical difficulties upon release. Sony announced on May 3 that this requirement would return, and they immediately faced significant backlash. One key reason for this is that users and gamers from many countries around the globe are not eligible to create PSN accounts. Residents of the entirety of Africa, the Baltics, and many other countries are not eligible for a PSN account, effectively locking these users out of playing the game.
On May 6, the official PlayStation Twitter account announced that the integration of PSN accounts with Steam is not moving forward. While the decision will likely benefit Helldivers 2 in the long-run, the damage may already be done to the game’s presence in live streaming.
Streams Charts has analysed the game’s viewership on Twitch, as well as the mentions of the title in global Twitch Chats, to highlight the effect these announcements have had on not only the game’s viewership, but also its discussion and cultural relevance on Twitch.
Mentions of Helldivers 2 in Twitch Chats
The third-person shooter reached its peak of cultural significance on Twitch on February 20, only 12 days after the game’s initial release. This coincided with a new patch update for the title, which improved the matchmaking services, optimised servers, and fixed many stability issues with the game: making it more fun for all to play. On February 20, the game’s discussion reached its peak as it was mentioned over 22.8K times in global Twitch Chats, and the build-up to this peak was both rapid and intense.
Since then, discussion of the game has calmed down, steadily decreasing over the past months with the odd spike mixed in. From April 15 to the end of the month, the game was receiving roughly 3.8K mentions daily in Twitch Chats, as the game’s discussions settled into a steady rhythm. However, Sony’s announcement of the account-linking requirement immediately reignited discussion of the title on Twitch, and the game was mentioned 10.2K times on May 3.
Between May 3 and 5, the game was mentioned 9.5K times a day on average. For reference, this is slightly more than the number of times the game was mentioned on its release day and the following two days: 9.1K times a day on average. The announcement of Sony requiring this account-linking procedure was more heavily discussed than the game itself upon release, but Sony’s clarification that the account requirements were being dismissed was even more cause for discussion.
On May 6, the game reached its highest daily mentions in over 45 days. The game was mentioned 11.9K times in global Twitch chats, surpassing both the release day mentions and the discussion on May 3. The celebration and discussion of the requirements being dismissed was more popular than the outrage at the initial announcement.
Compared to the release week cycle, this past week has brought Helldivers 2 back to the public consciousness in full force. The discussions for the game on Twitch immediately reignited on May 3, more than doubling overnight.
The account-linking scandal has driven the third-person-shooter to the same level of discussion it achieved during its release week, which usually remains by far the most popular week for any title on Twitch. Of course, despite the saying, not all press is good press. The scandal has had a distinctly negative effect on the game’s playerbase.
According to SteamDB, May 7 recorded the lowest peak player count the game has seen since release, with only 112.1K peak players recorded. The game also received more than 350K negative Steam reviews between May 3 and May 6, although the negative review bombing has since stopped as of May 7.
The scandal has objectively had a negative effect on both the game’s player base and Steam reviews, but the question is if it has had any effect on the game’s viewership on Twitch. Player base and Twitch statistics are often not directly linked to one another, so Streams Charts has analysed the title’s daily Twitch viewership across the past fortnight.
Helldivers 2 daily Twitch viewership in the past two weeks
Helldivers 2 has seen its viewership steadily decrease since its release in February. This is nothing alarming for the title, as it is normal for games with a hype wave behind them to see a steady dropoff in viewership as it slowly loses interest for viewers. In February, the title recorded 36.8K Average Viewers throughout the entire month, and this has decreased to a preliminary figure of 4K AV for May.
However, the shooter has seen a drastic drop in watch time since May 3, and this has not yet recovered as the review bombing situation did. On May 3, the game recorded 145.7K Hours Watched, actually significantly more than the game had received in the prior 5 days. After Sony announced the account-linking requirements, viewership for the title was halved overnight. On May 4, the game recorded only 73.2K Hours Watched, marking a 49.8% drop compared to the previous day.
This decrease in viewership has only continued since. On May 6 the game recorded a slight increase to 90.8K HW, occurring at the same time as Sony’s dismissal of the PSN account requirement, but viewership continued to fall again the next day. On May 7, the game received 72.2K HW, even less than the game received on May 4.
It is too early to say if this trend will continue in the long-run for Helldivers 2, however, according to the current data: Sony’s announcement of the required integration of PSN and Steam has had an irreversible negative effect on Helldivers 2 viewership on Twitch. The developers have a sizable task ahead of them to return the title back to the top of Twitch, and users can track this progress through the game’s Statistics tab on Streams Charts.