R/place is a collaborative project hosted by Reddit where all users can slowly add to a canvas: one pixel at a time. The event initially launched on April Fools’ Day in 2017 but has become a recurring event for the website. It returned for the first time since 2017 last year, and this year marks the third iteration of the canvas.
Last year, 10M+ users participated in the art project and it caused Reddit’s daily active users to reach an all-time peak. On July 19th of this year, Reddit announced that r/place would return for the 20th of July 2023. Streamers from around the world were excited to stream themselves participating and audiences came out in full force to support their favourite streamer.
Most popular streams of r/place
Since the release yesterday, Rubius has received the most concurrent viewers whilst streaming the event. The Spanish streamer with over 14M Followers on Twitch had his highest number of concurrent viewers in months, streaming the Reddit canvas. 56K concurrent viewers watched the Spaniard tour around the in-progress canvas, only 6K fewer viewers than Papaplatte.
Papaplatte is a German content creator and received 50K concurrent viewers on r/place. Historically, Germany has had one of the largest r/place communities. Every year they terrorise others with their organisation and willpower to create their own art. The German community is so big they are able to work towards ambitious goals, like creating a German flag so wide it covers the width of the entire canvas. So dedicated to his goals, Papaplatte actually had multiple streams within the two days which received enough attention to sit on this ranking.
In third place and representing a third language, Cellbit is a Brazillian streamer who fell just short of matching Papaplatte, garnering 49K concurrent viewers at peak. The Minecraft streamer called it the “war of Reddit”, a phrase that is spreading around the live-streaming community as different communities battle it out to get their design cemented forever in r/place history.
Locklear locked into fourth with 41K Peak Viewers during his r/place stream. The French streamer called it “pixel war”, and the stream was his sixth most popular broadcast, ever. He unfortunately was not able to match 59K concurrent viewers, a record set by himself last year whilst streaming the previous r/place iteration. At this point in r/place’s history, it's tradition for the French and German communities to battle it out, seeing who can take over the others’ art.
Germany’s reinforcements came in full: with GRONKH, stegi, and Bonjwa taking sixth, ninth, and tenth place, respectively. Gronkh is the largest of the three, with 1.57M Followers on Twitch, and he streamed r/place for four hours, reaching 33K concurrent viewers. Although a sizeable audience, 33K is not a huge deviation from the norm for GRONKH. Stegi and Bonjwa are two smaller streamers, with 467K and 231K Followers. Stegi streamed twice covering r/place, once on the day of the announcement and once today. Both streams set all-time records for Stegi, 13K Peak Viewers watching his r/place broadcast becoming his best-ever stream in terms of popularity.
In sixth place, Roier from Mexico made an appearance with 31K Peak Viewers. We recently discussed Roier in our top Hispanic streamers for Q2 article, and the streamer is truly on the rise. 31K concurrent viewers are not abnormal for a channel of Roier’s size, and his r/place stream did not seem to exceed his typical audience as it did for Stegi.
LeBouseuh is a French streamer just slightly smaller than Locklear in terms of Followers. His r/place stream reached a peak of 20K concurrent viewers, and although not an all-time record it still represents a peak moment for his channel. The Frenchman’s r/place stream became his third-most-popular stream of 2023. Looking at the stream dynamics for his broadcast, the instant uptick in viewership as he changes focus to r/place is obvious.
Last but not least, Minecraft personality GeorgeNotFound took eighth place on the ranking. GeorgeNotFound is a British content creator, most well known for his appearance in the YouTube content of Dream. He reached a peak of 15K concurrent viewers, but with the strength of over 5M+ Followers on Twitch, he suffered from a lack of engagement from his audience.
R/place is a time for communities on Reddit to come together and work towards a shared goal. It brings people together and presents a unique time for content creators on the internet, as the race to create content for the 2023 r/place iteration is on. Although Rubius peaked at 56K concurrent viewers whilst taking part, r/place’s hold on the internets attention will only increase as the art experiment continues. Take part in r/place at the following link:www.reddit.com/r/place.
