On March 24, it has been a month since the start of the armed conflict in Ukraine. Over this time, the gaming and esports industries have changed a lot: large gaming companies began to leave the Russian market in great numbers, while teams and players from Russia faced restrictions on their participation in international tournaments. The tragic events have also affected streaming. In a new Streams Charts article, we will tell you how Ukrainian and Russian Twitch have changed a month after the start of the armed conflict.
Twitch Viewership Statistics’ Changes
The Russian-speaking streamer community on Twitch has always been made up of a wide variety of nationalities, and politics has never influenced its integrity before. But between February 24 and March 24, the Russian segment of the platform began to split. Due to different views on the situation in Ukraine, conflicts began to emerge between both viewers and streamers.
Between January 23 and February 23 (29 days before the armed conflict outbreak), the Russian segment of Twitch accumulated 139.7 million Hours Watched, and between February 24 and March 24 — only 95 million (-32%). Other viewership metrics also dropped noticeably: the number of Unique Channels — by 31%, the Average Viewers number — by 25%, and the Peak Viewers number — by 40%.
Many metrics of the Ukrainian-speaking segment also sagged: the Hours Watched number — by 36%, the number of Unique Channels — by 7.5%, and the Average Viewers number — by 28%. But thanks to political broadcasts, the number of Peak Viewers rose by 175% to 6.62K people.
Trovo Viewership Statistics’ Changes
Because of the events in Ukraine, Russian creators became unable to withdraw money from Twitch and began creating accounts on Trovo as a safety net. Some continued to broadcast on the Amazon platform, while others switched completely to Tencent's streaming service.
The platform itself has also not stood aside and has already announced innovations of the Trovo 500 program for the CIS segment. Now paid subscriptions and the platform's currency Elixir will be available for purchase in rubles, and the platform is also working on the functionality of money withdrawal to Russian banks. DonationAlerts, Russia's most popular streaming monetization service, has also introduced registration via Trovo.
Viewership dynamics of RU/UA channels on Twitch and Trovo
From February 24 to March 24, Russian-language broadcasting on Trovo has significantly increased: the Hours Watched number — by 84%, the number of Unique Channels — by 390%, the number of Average Viewers — 100%, and the Peak Viewers number — by 183%. Ukrainian-language segment's metrics on Trovo have also increased: the Hours Watched number— by 96%, the number of Unique Channels — by 201.5%, the Average Viewers number — by 89%, and the Peak Viewers number — by 65%.
Mentions in Twitch Chat Analysis
We have analyzed the messages related to the situation in Ukraine in the Twitch chat and highlighted those that were most frequently mentioned in the period from February 24 to March 24.
The words "war" and "stop" were mentioned very often in Twitch chats. They were regularly used in one phrase and appeared about 1.95 million times. The name of Russian President Vladimir Putin was mentioned three times less frequently. It is interesting that the word "Putin" (635.8K mentions) appeared in the chat more often than "Ukraine" (624.6K mentions). The fifth most frequently mentioned word in this period (523.8K) was "Russia". It should be noted that after February 24, the average number of mentions of Ukraine in one message on Twitch increased from 1.5 to 2.5.
The peak of mentions to words related to the war fell on the day the armed conflict began (February 24). At the same time, in the Russian-speaking segment of Twitch, people more often discussed the very fact of hostilities on the territory of Ukraine, and in the English-speaking segment, Putin and Russia were mentioned most of all.
It is also curious that in the English-speaking segment, the word "war" was actively used in the chat from the very beginning of 2022, and after the start of the tragic events in Ukraine, the frequency of its mentions increased insignificantly. This was probably due to the activity of the world media, which discussed the armed conflict in Ukraine a few months before it began. At the same time, residents of the CIS countries were not ready for the unfortunate events — the first surge of mentions to the war on the Russian-language Twitch happened only when the President of the Russian Federation announced the independence of the DPR and LPR.
Russian Twitch Segment's Top Categories Before and After the Conflict
As mentioned above, the viewership statistics of the Russian segment of Twitch dropped significantly during the first month of the armed conflict. Due to this, almost all of the top categories saw their Hours Watched numbers drop.
The platform's most popular category, Just Chatting, lost nearly 35% of its Hours Watched. But the Politics category entered the top, accumulating more than 7 million Hours Watched, almost 18 times more than the month before the conflict began. Its rise in popularity resulted in Just Chatting losing a part of its audience.
The Politics category's statistics started to grow a few days before the armed conflict began, namely on February 21, when the Russian president proclaimed the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. On this day JesusAVGN set a record on his channel, gathering 85K Peak Viewers. The streamer broadcasted the president's live speech and amassed 309.6K Hours Watched.
The best performance of Politics category on Russian Twitch was in the first week after the beginning of the armed conflict. During this time, the category accumulated 5.3 million Hours Watched, of which 1.26 million were amassed by cheatbanned, 1.22 million by JesusAVGN, and 436.4K HW by the Ukrainian streamer ZLOYn. Each of the streamers mentioned broke a record for their channels, with 40.5K, 103.6K, and 85.6K Peak Viewers, respectively.
CS:GO and Dota 2, which are usually the most watched games in the Russian-speaking segment, lost 38% and 39% of their Hours Watched numbers, respectively. For several weeks before the conflict began, Dota 2's Hours Watched number was gradually increasing, but immediately after the start of the conflict, that number dropped quite dramatically. IEM Katowice 2022 CS:GO matches were held from February 17 to 27, a week before and a week after the start of the tragic events in Ukraine.
Viewership dynamics of Dota 2 and CS:GO
Initially, viewers actively followed Valve's shooter on Twitch, but after February 24, the Hours Watched number of CS:GO noticeably dropped. It should be noted that this happened despite the Grand final of the tournament being held, which gathered 211.9K Peak Viewers in the Russian-speaking segment and more than 2.1 million Peak Viewers worldwide.
Another new category that made it into the top 5 is Elden Ring. The game amassed more than 6 million Hours Watched despite the fact that it cannot be purchased on Steam by Russian bank cards that are cut off from SWIFT.
It is noteworthy that the only category that was in the top 10 a month before the conflict and managed to improve its Hours Watched number by March 24 (+24.6%) is Virtual Casino. Such popular Russian-speaking streamers as buster, egorkreed and n3koglai together accumulated more than a million Hours Watched broadcasting it.
It should be noted that many popular streamers left Russia after the start of the armed conflict. For example, buster and egorkreed began actively streaming Virtual Casino after they went to Dubai, UAE. It is interesting that the streamers abroad did not have access to their money, as Russian bank cards no longer functioned there due to the sanctions. The content creators probably decided to stream Virtual Casino, as casino ads are considered the best-paid on Twitch.
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From February 24 to March 24, the Russian segment of Twitch became significantly less active, while Trovo gained a new audience from the CIS. Many streamers became much more popular and set records on their channels in terms of Peak Viewers, discussing the tragic situation in the Politics category. By the number of words "stop" and "war" mentioned in the chat, it is clear that the majority of the platform's users crave for peace. We hope that the parties to the armed conflict will reach an agreement as soon as possible, people will stop dying, and we will not do a similar review in a month.
