Hogwarts Legacy's release was one of the highest-profile events on Twitch in February 2023. The long-awaited game by Avalanche Software immediately attracted the attention of top streamers, who were excited to explore the magical world of the "Harry Potter" universe. Within a week after the release, the game ranked first on Twitch's Most Watched Games list and second among all categories on the platform (behind only Just Chatting). In a new Streams Charts article, we will take a look at how the game's statistics changed a month after release.
Chasing content and views, most of the top streamers bought the early access version of Hogwarts Legacy, and found themselves in the magical world back on February 7, a few days before the official release. These content creators include streamers Fextralife, IlloJuan, xQc, Gotaga, Asmongold, KaiCenat, Summit1g, and others. Thanks to their audiences, Hogwarts Legacy accumulated millions of Hours Watched and made it to the top categories on Twitch. The game was also promoted by the drops of in-game items that could be obtained while watching the broadcasts.
Overall Hogwarts Legacy’s Statistics Over the Month Since the Release
Viewership stats of Hogwarts Legacy
Between February 7 and March 7, Hogwarts Legacy accumulated 74.1 million Hours Watched, ranking fifth among all Twitch titles. It fell behind Just Chatting, League of Legends, Valorant, and GTA V, but surpassed regulars such as Minecraft, CS:GO, and Fortnite. Taking a look beyond the platform, the Hogwarts Legacy category on Twitch accumulated more Hours Watched in a month than many Netflix shows in English.
On the day of the game's release, the Hogwarts Legacy category saw nearly 1.27 million Peak Viewers, the best Twitch result of any single-player title. The game about wizards lagged behind only the Squid Craft 2 event in Minecraft, which featured top streamers, as well as broadcasts of the Kings League Media Football League in the Sports category.
Hogwarts Legacy on Twitch saw 108K Average Viewers over the month, the fifth-highest total on the platform over that period of time. At the same time, the game by Avalanche Software had an undisputed lead in the Peak Channels number — more than 32.1K channels. Destiny 2 was in second place with 14.2K Peak Channels, all thanks to the release of the Lightfall expansion on the last day of February.
Among all the channels, only three succeeded in accumulating more than a million Hours Watched in a month. Streamers of the Fextralife channel became the leaders by audience reach in the Hogwarts Legacy category (2.6 million HW). IlloJuan and xQc also made it into the Top 3, with 1.8 million HW each.
The record for Peak Viewers in the category belongs to the official channel of the AvalancheSoftware studio — on the day of the Hogwarts Legacy's release, it was watched by 218.6 Peak Viewers. The closest pursuers represented by xQc and KaiCenat attracted almost 100K Peak Viewers fewer.
Speaking of the distribution by language, it is the English streamers that accumulated the most Hours Watched of the category's totals — 39.3%. Spanish (11.1%) and German (9.1%) are also in the Top 3 according to this metric. We should note that, compared to the release week, these ratios remained practically unchanged, and the difference was no more than 1% for each language.
Viewership Dynamics of Hogwarts Legacy on Twitch
Comparison of Hogwarts Legacy and Elden Ring Viewership Dynamics on Twitch
One month after release, all of the Hogwarts Legacy totals on Twitch dropped dramatically. In comparison, the total Hours Watched in the first week (February 7-13) were 53 million. But in the last week (March 6-12), the number dropped to 1.28 million HW. Total Airtime of the category dropped from 240.1K to 18.9K hours. The total number of channels decreased seven times, and the number of broadcasts — ten times.
Why has the hype about Hogwarts Legacy gone down so quickly?
Hogwarts Legacy is a single-player game without multiplayer, where the main focus is on the story and atmosphere of the magical world. Games like this attract attention, but rarely stay at the top of the platform categories for long. Viewers like it better when a streamer faces off against live opponents rather than NPCs.
Secondly, Hogwarts Legacy is quite weak in terms of replayability on broadcasts — it has a fairly large open world, but after watching one broadcast, a viewer will learn all the plot twists and will hardly want to check out another streamer to watch the same thing.
Finally, a game about wizards has a rather low barrier to entry in terms of difficulty. A streamer is unlikely to surprise viewers with his "skills", like in CS:GO, League of Legends or single-player titles like Dark Souls.
Another important driver for the decline of Hogwarts Legacy is the competition posed by other titles. The game by Avalanche had to share the audience with Sons of the Forest, Dark and Darker, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Atomic Heart, and other projects. We also should not forget that in the same month with the Hogwarts Legacy release, there was a large Squid Craft 2 event, where top streamers competed in Minecraft survival mini-games.
Hogwarts Legacy surpassed the aforementioned titles by Hours Watched, but fell far short of some other games. For example, Elden Ring, released in February 2022, accumulated over 151 million Hours Watched on Twitch in its first month, twice as many as Hogwarts Legacy.
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Hogwarts Legacy is one of the most anticipated titles of 2023, which is sure to make a pleasant impression on everyone who decides to try oneself as a student of the famous school of witchcraft and wizardry. But it's difficult to predict whether it will be able to retain its status as the most popular game of the year. This year will see plenty of high-profile releases including Diablo IV, Baldur's Gate III, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl and, of course, Starfield. Each of them has the potential to outperform Hogwarts Legacy. At least on Twitch.
