Vaultroom is a Japanese gaming facility and clothing/merchandise brand that often collaborates with streamers and VTubers from Japan. They’ve reached a more global level of recognition with the help of their VCR Rust & GTA V servers, which hosted many of Japan’s most popular streamers and gave them a platform to collaborate and grow audiences together. VCR recently returned with a Minecraft server beta, a week-long test of a Minecraft server featuring Japan’s most popular creators, which was a massive success.
Japanese fans may know vaultroom from their clothing line collaborations, such as the recent vaultroom x GAWR GURA line. Their VCR venture is in collaboration with esports organization Crazy Raccoon, one of Japan’s most popular esports organizations and one that often hosts their own esports events for streamers. Together two brands have created gaming servers that have had drastic effects on the global livestreaming industry, as well as given Japanese creators some of their most popular content in years.
VCR Minecraft β
9.15 19:00頃
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皆さんにお楽しみ頂ければ幸いです✌️
どうぞよろしくお願いいたします#VCRマイクラ pic.twitter.com/1oGQYTN4B9— VAULTROOM (@room_vault) September 13, 2024
Vaultroom’s announcement for the VCR Minecraft Beta
Vaultroom’s announcement of the new Minecraft server came just two days before its opening and received strong engagement from the Japanese Twitter community. The post was liked over 100,000 times, and retweeted 40,000 times. Once the server launched, Minecraft quickly saw a boost in its viewership across major global livestreaming platforms, and this helped it to break into Twitch’s top 5 games.
Japanese audiences launched Minecraft to top of Twitch
For the week in which the server was live, Minecraft was the fourth-most-watched game on Twitch. The category received 17.61M Hours Watched, which marked a 230% increase compared to the previous week. The category on Twitch actually saw the amount of streamers decrease for the week, with a 93% drop in the Unique Channels broadcasting the game. The small, select group of Japanese streamers on the VCR server brought a wave of viewership to the category on Twitch, increasing the Viewers per Channel metric by 210%.
Minecraft also recorded a particularly strong peak viewership during the VCR server’s lifespan. The category on Twitch received 351K Peak Viewers for the week, only slightly less than Counter-Strike, which was in the middle of the ESL Pro League Season 20 event. In other words, the VCR Minecraft beta server’s peak viewership was comparable to the event viewership for one of the world’s most popular esports titles.
Of course, Japanese streamers are also highly active on YouTube Live as well as Twitch. Although YouTube Gaming is usually the more popular platform for Japanese content creators, Twitch recorded the most viewership for this VCR server. Across YouTube Gaming, Minecraft was the third-most-popular category for the week, only falling behind ML:BB and the general “Gaming” category.
The streamers behind this event are the source of VCR’s viewership. These streamers are given an opportune platform to collaborate with other large streamers and grow their own viewership, and many of Japan’s top streamers spent well over 40 hours broadcasting from the week-long beta server. Below, Streams Charts has collated the most-watched and most popular streamers for the selected period.
Streamers took full advantage of the VCR-powered collaborations
Top streamers by Hours Watched & Peak Viewers
Japanese streamers らっだぁ (rader) and fps_shaka were the two most-watched creators of the event, having both accumulated more than 2M Hours Watched in total. The former of these two streamers achieved his viewership thanks to one of the highest Airtime of any streamer during the event; らっだぁ was live for 77 hours during the one-week event, about double that of the commitment to a full-time job. On the other hand, fps_shaka was one of the most-watched creators overall for the event and achieved his viewership thanks to his large concurrent audience.
らっだぁ was the most-watched creator of the entire server and a good example of a streamer who has enjoyed profound benefits from these VCR events. The streamer has held some of his most popular content ever through GTA V RP content, with VCR server content dominating his channel’s top viewership too.
VTubers are ingrained in Japanese livestreaming culture, and many of the participating creators for this Minecraft server are representatives of the most popular VTubing agencies from Japan. Kuzuha Channel was the third-most-watched creator by both Hours Watched and Peak Viewers; the NIJISANJI-affiliated streamer received 57K Peak Viewers during the server’s launch day.
叶ちゃんねる (kanae_2434) and イブラヒム【にじさんじ】(Ibrahim) were the next two-most-watched creators, with Ibrahim also recording one of the event’s highest peak viewerships. The NIJISANJI creator recorded 59K Peak Viewers, his fourth-most-popular broadcast ever, on the server’s second day as he explored the hub of the server and was immediately surrounded by many of Japan’s most popular internet personalities.
Across the lower half of the rankings, many of the Japanese creators enjoyed some of their most popular viewership during the VCR Rust and GTA V servers. Although this short Minecraft beta was not able to match the viewership achieved by these two other events, these creators still recorded promising viewership. If vaultroom and Crazy Raccoon do decide to launch a full Minecraft server season of content, it would surely host some of the most-watched Japanese livestreaming content of the year.
The recent VCR Beta was more-watched than many other livestreaming Minecraft endeavours, such as the QSMP, which launched early last year. The QSMP server brought audiences together from Latin America, Brazil, North America, and has invited creators from other regions throughout its lifespan. Despite the global potential of the QSMP server, the short-but-sweet VCR event was more popular thanks to this loyal Japanese audience.
Streamer Minecraft Servers Launch Viewership
To compare the launch week viewership of each server, we have collated the viewership statistics of Minecraft across both Twitch and YouTube Gaming for the selected periods. Yes, this does include viewership statistics of channels not covering these events, but the VCR Minecraft beta managed to drum up more viewership than the QSMP launch, despite Minecraft being much more popular last year.
The VCR Minecraft Beta helped the sandbox game to receive 23.36M Hours Watched across both Twitch and YouTube, millions more than what was achieved last year for the QSMP launch. The QSMP launched to over 100,000 peak concurrent viewers for Minecraft, but there were also over 10.7K channels playing Minecraft across both major livestreaming platforms. Minecraft achieved its massive viewership during the VCR beta despite only 1.3K channels covering the game across both platforms.
During the period of the VCR server, Japanese viewership took over Minecraft completely. During the week-long VCR event, 77% of all Minecraft viewership came from Japanese-language broadcasts, highlighting the celebrity status of many of the streamers involved with the event. The beta test helped the game to become the 4th most-watched category on Twitch, far higher than the 8th place achieved during the QSMP server.
The short-notice nature of the VCR beta server helped it to generate its viewership. The server was announced only two days before it went live, and the short lifespan of the server helped instill FOMO within Japanese viewers, who tuned in to the event for fear of missing it. The VCR beta saw Minecraft viewership increase by 230% for the week it was live, and if vaultroom and Crazy Raccoon bring the server back, it will likely completely dominate global livestreaming once again.
Vaultroom’s popularity shows no signs of slowing down. The ventures into Rust, GTA V, and Minecraft along with Crazy Raccoon have hosted some of the year’s most popular livestreaming moments and brought many Japanese creators the largest potential audience they have ever been exposed to. VCR’s legacy isn’t limited to Japan, as the effect of these events on the livestreaming industry are felt far outside of Japan’s content sphere.
