January 8 marked the end of the Escape from Tarkov’s New Year event, which the developers held together with Twitch. The game has enjoyed incredible popularity on the streaming service throughout the event. Its hours watched increased several times, and the game also twice updated its peak viewers record on Twitch. All of this was achieved thanks to the system of drops received by the viewers.
How the event attracted players and viewers?
Escape from Tarkov had its New Year event take place from December 28th till January 8th. This period encompassed the fifth ranked season held by the developers. Key feature of the event was Twitch Drops: the viewers received weapons, equipment and various rare items for watching the game’s Twitch broadcasts.
On the first and last days of the event, drops could be obtained by watching any channel in the Escape from Tarkov category. During the rest of days, drops were tied to the channels of particular streamers.
It should be noted that this is not the first time for Escape from Tarkov to hold the New Year events and promotions. In 2019, a similar event also helped the game to improve its viewership statistics, allowing the shooter to rise from eighth to the third spot in the ranking of most popular Twitch categories by the hours watched.
How much did Escape from Tarkov's popularity increase on Twitch during the event?
Based on the results of 2020, Escape of Tarkov was no longer in the top 10 sections of Twitch, but still maintained a rather high spot, being ranked 12th with 396M hours watched. The game managed to overtake such popular titles as Apex Legends, Hearthstone, Overwatch and PUBG.
It is noteworthy that in the very last days of 2020 (December 28-31st) the game’s category became the second most popular on Twitch, being outmatched only by Just Chatting. The gap between the two was only 5.3M hours watched. Meanwhile, the gap between the second and third spots was much bigger: League of Legends was behind Escape from Tarkov by 16.4M hours watched.
A few days before the event, the number of hours watched for Escape from Tarkov on Twitch was hovering within the range of 2.2-2.7 million hours; but during the event itself it increased drastically. The game gained the most views on the second day of the festive event — with 8.7M hours watched being spent by the viewers on game’s streams on December 29th. It was also the first time the game’s record for peak viewers on the platform was updated, amounting to 422K viewers.
The second surge of interest in the game occurred in 2021. On January 4th, the broadcasts of Escape from Tarkov were watched by a total of 441.4K peak viewers which is the game’s current record on Twitch.
Once the event had ended, the statistics of Escape from Tarkov were rather quick to return to their original values. While on the first day after the event the category amassed 4.7M hours watched, they dropped back to the usual 2.2-2.3M hours watched per day by January 10-11th.
Who was the most popular streamer?
The active followers of Escape from Tarkov on Twitch likely won’t be surprised by seeing the top of the game’s streamers for the duration of the event. Spots in the top 3 were taken by the content creators that became the leaders of the category based on the results of 2020.
In terms of hours watched, the Australian streamer Pestily became the leader in both cases. In 2020, his Escape from Tarkov broadcasts amassed 37 million hours watched, and 9M hours watched over the course of twelve days of the event. He also took first spot among the event’s streamers by the peak viewers, reaching 226K viewers.
The category’s second best streamer by the results of 2020, summit1g became the third best streamer during the event with 3.9M hours watched. He was surpassed by almost one-third by LVNDMARK, whose holiday streams amounted to 6.1M hours watched.
It is noteworthy that while DrLupo and Sacriel entered the top 5 streamers of Escape from Tarkov by the results of 2020, they failed to do so during the event. The content creators were outmatched by Anton (3.6M hours watched) and Sigma (2.6M hours watched). The latter also became a top 4 female streamer in 2020 by peak viewers: 128K people watched her summer's stream of Escape from Tarkov when Twitch Drops were also enabled.
Rust has shown active growth in Twitch pretty much simultaneously with Escape from Tarkov — and when it comes to the hours watched over the last month, it already managed to bypass the game made by Battlestate Games. You’ll be able to read about the reasons for this on Streams Charts in the nearest future. Therefore, subscribe to our social networks so as to not miss any announcements!
