In the second quarter of 2024, several new game releases captivated gamers, especially first-person shooters that thrilled fans of Escape from Tarkov and Call of Duty. Streamers dove into the collaborative gameplay of the highly anticipated Chained Together, praised the chilling horror of Content Warning and Still Wakes the Deep, admired the immersive landscapes of Manor Lords, and celebrated the character design in Stellar Blade. But which ones performed the best across key livestreaming metrics?
Top Game Releases of Q2 2024
Top Q2 2024 releases by total watch time for the quarter
Watch time is a crucial metric for estimating a game's popularity in livestreaming. In Q2 2024, the leading games were Arena Breakout: Infinite and XDefiant, which garnered just over 16 million Hours Watched on Twitch over three months. Arena Breakout: Infinite attracted fans of Escape from Tarkov due to its similar gameplay. In contrast, XDefiant captured the interest of top streamers like Scump, Shroud, and Nadeshot.
Wuthering Waves, an anime-style open-world gacha game from the Chinese studio Kuro Game, claimed third place with 15.3 million HW. During Q2, Wuthering Waves was streamed by the likes of Tectone, zackrawrr, k4sen, and Shylily.
The top five also featured Gray Zone Warfare and Chained Together, each generating 11 million HW. Gray Zone Warfare is a new dynamic tactical first-person shooter with a strong emphasis on realism, similar to Escape from Tarkov. In May, streamers like shroud, Pestily, summit1g, and LVNDMARK highlighted the game, which accumulated over 5.3 million HW.
Content Warning, a cooperative survival horror game from Landfall Publishing, accumulated around 10 million HW. The game attracted many top streamers known for collaborative broadcasts, including Papaplatte, caseoh_, xQc, Cellbit, and Giggand.
Close behind in the rankings were Stellar Blade and Manor Lords, both released on the same day. Over the quarter, Stellar Blade and Manor Lords garnered 8.1 million and 7.3 million HW, respectively. The hype around Stellar Blade was fueled by its controversial marketing strategy, which emphasized the sexualization and objectification of its main character. Streamers such as Rubius, CohhCarnage, alanzoka, Elajjaz, and even Sasha Grey streamed Stellar Blade.
Manor Lords, a medieval city-building simulator developed by a single game designer from Poland, also received significant attention. It was particularly popular among German streamers like GRONKH, MauriceWeber, and HandOfBlood.
The ninth spot in the rankings was occupied by MultiVersus, a crossover fighting game featuring characters from various Warner Bros. franchises, which earned 4.8 million HW. Although MultiVersus entered early access in 2022, its full release occurred in May 2024. It was closely followed by Another Crab's Treasure, an adventure game with Souls-like elements from Aggro Crab, which also accumulated similar total watch time.
Top Q2 2024 releases by first-week viewership
Watch time for a quarter gives a broad sense of a game's popularity on the platform, but comparing titles with such an approach can raise questions due to their differing release dates. To achieve a more accurate comparison, we examined the watch time each new game accumulated during its first week since release.
Arena Breakout: Infinite led with 8.7 million HW in its release week, thanks to significant attention from top streamers and the distribution of drops during broadcasts. Wuthering Waves, XDefiant, and Chained Together followed closely, each earning over 6 million HW in their first weeks. Drops, facilitated through a new system involving gift subscriptions, contributed notably to these games' early success.
Completing the top 10 were Manor Lords and MultiVersus, which had similar audience engagement in their first weeks, with 2.8 million and 2.7 million HW, respectively.
Top Q2 2024 releases by peak concurrent viewership
Another key indicator of a game's popularity is the number of viewers it attracts during live streams. Peak Viewers provide insight into immediate audience interest and are often tied to specific broadcasts or streamers.
In Q2 2024, Arena Breakout: Infinite led in Peak Viewers among new game releases. On May 13, the game's section on Twitch reached over 218,000 PV, driven by streams featuring drops from prominent streamers like Recrent, LVNDMARK, shroud, and Pestily. Chained Together came in second with 217,000 PV on June 19, thanks to streams of alanzoka, auronplay, Squeezie, kamet0, and ibai.
XDefiant achieved its highest peak of 203,800 viewers on its release day, attracting numerous top content creators. The largest peak audience of over 50,000 was drawn by shroud.
Gray Zone Warfare ranked fourth with 175,200 PV, reached on the release day when the likes of Papaplatte, shroud, and LIRIK shared their first impressions of the game. Content Warning secured fifth place with over 156,600 PV on Twitch, primarily due to American streamers Jynxzi and caseoh_, who conducted a joint stream on April 11.
Wuthering Waves also saw its peak on release day, May 23, with more than 148,200 simultaneous viewers. The game attracted a significant number of Japanese streamers, as well as Western content creators like Rubius, Tectone, and zackrawrr.
Despite mixed reviews, Senua's Saga: Hellblade II attracted a solid audience, with 110,100 PV tuning in on May 21. Notable streamers for the game included alanzoka, LIRIK, Elajjaz, and 39daph.
The top ten new game releases for Q2 2024 were rounded out by Still Wakes the Deep, Stellar Blade, and MultiVersus. These games had similar peak viewership numbers but did not exceed 100,000 viewers.
Top Q2 2024 releases by peak concurrent channels broadcasting
If peak online viewers reflect audience interest in a game, the number of channels broadcasting a game indicates the level of interest from streamers.
Among new releases, Wuthering Waves and XDefiant saw the highest streamer activity on Twitch. On their release days, these games had peaks of 8,000 and 6,700 channels, respectively. This high activity was largely due to Twitch Drops.
Interestingly, both Wuthering Waves and Twitch had an unconventional drop system. To earn Twitch Drops for Wuthering Waves, viewers had to gift or purchase two Twitch subscriptions of any tier to a streamer playing Wuthering Waves with Drops enabled. A similar system was used for XDefiant. This strategy created additional incentives for streamers to broadcast these games. As a result, Wuthering Waves ranked fifth among Twitch games in Q2 2024 for the number of peak channels, while XDefiant secured ninth place.
Other games had significantly fewer channels. MultiVersus, a fighting game, peaked at around 3,400 channels, while the horror game Content Warning reached approximately 2,100 channels. Most other titles fell within the range of 1,000 to 2,000 channels at peak. For comparison, Elden Ring had over 17,100 peak channels in Q2 2024.
