A week has passed since the early release of Path of Exile 2, the highly anticipated title that action RPG fans had been eagerly awaiting for years. The game has delivered impressive numbers, not only in player count but also in terms of livestreaming viewership. It became the only new release to surpass 1 million concurrent viewers on Twitch in 2024, also securing the third-highest peak viewership among all games this year. And what's interesting is that these remarkable achievements were partly driven by the issues the game faced at launch.
Path of Exile 2 entered early access on the evening of December 6. With over a million pre-orders, Grinding Gear Studios had legitimate concerns that the servers wouldn’t handle the overwhelming demand, a possibility they warned players about ahead of time. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened: most players couldn’t log in, which caused a massive surge of viewers on Twitch as people tuned in to see the game in action.
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Within just a few hours of release, Path of Exile 2 drew over 1.2 million concurrent viewers on Twitch, a truly phenomenal milestone for a new game. For context, Diablo IV, arguably its biggest competitor in the genre, reached a peak of “just” 940,000 viewers.
While peak viewership is only a snapshot, this Path of Exile 2’s achievement still remains incredibly impressive. In 2024, it ranked third among all games streamed on Twitch by the metric, behind only League of Legends, which broke a global esports record during Worlds 2024, and Counter-Strike, which drew over 1.5 million concurrent viewers during the year’s first Major.
While Path of Exile 2's launch issues undoubtedly contributed to its success, it would be a mistake to credit everything to that alone. The game generated massive hype on its own, driven by the numerous gameplay and technical innovations introduced by the developers. From its revamped graphics and level design to an engaging story and exceptional music, the game has earned widespread acclaim from both players and critics for overhauling many key aspects of the original game whilst keeping its original charm.
Path of Exile 2 shined with its peak viewership, but it also performed exceptionally well across other viewer metrics. In the seven days following its early access launch, the game amassed an impressive 35.4 million hours of watch time on Twitch, making it the second-most successful game release of the year by the indicator: only Palworld, with over 40 million Hours Watched, performed better.
A big boost to the game’s Twitch performance was made by Drops: since the early access launch, Twitch viewers have been able to earn cosmetic in-game items, with the promotion running through December 22. Thus, it’s almost certain that the game will continue to draw attention from both streamers and viewers until then.
When it comes to the audience, almost 60% of the total watch time came from English-speaking viewers, including Americans, a large number of English-speaking Europeans, and audiences from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Of the top ten most-watched streamers, eight were English-speaking content creators. The game also drew considerable attention from Russian, German, and Chinese-speaking audiences.
Best-performing PoE 2 Twitch streamers
In conclusion, it’s clear that the years of anticipation were well worth it. Most players are thrilled with Path of Exile 2, which is reflected in both strong sales and the massive attention it’s received in livestreaming.