Warzone 2.0, the latest Call of Duty Battle Royale game, recently received its Season 4 update and went live on the 12th of July 2023. The update brought a brand-new map called Vondel, featuring a mixture of claustrophobic urban streets, large explorable structures, and some verticality for some fresh gameplay. The update also added three new weapons and five new operators for players to choose from, although not all of these operators are available immediately and may arrive for a mid-season update.
Although Warzone 2.0 remains one of the most popular games on Twitch and other streaming platforms, the game has been struggling to maintain a healthy viewership. Fans of the series were hoping a new update would revitalise the game and bring it back to old peaks. So, how has it been faring?
Warzone 2.0 Season 4 Launch viewership
Despite the sizeable update shipped out by the Warzone 2.0 development team, the reception for the update has been lukewarm at best. Players have reported huge FPS drops, packet loss issues, and even a lack of items and loot in games, which has since been patched by the developers. In the first five days, Season 4 managed to garner 2.85M Hours Watched. This figure is still quite sizable, more than a success for other game series; however, considering the popularity of Warzone 2.0 this reception is less than what fans have been hoping for. Compared to Season 3 the Hours Watched metric shows a 46.8% drop in only a couple of months.
While Hours Watched is a useful metric for analysing the long-term performance of a series or new update, Peak Viewers is relevant for understanding the level of hype or excitement behind a new update. Season 4 managed a peak of 79.7K concurrent viewers, enough to land it within the top twenty most-popular games on Twitch for this period, but compared to Season 3’s 120.6K peak, this still presents a downturn of 33.9%. Comparing Warzone 2.0 Season 4 to the launch of Warzone Season 3’s launch in April 2021, the situation becomes even more dire. Warzone reached its all-time peak of 1.6M concurrent viewers with the Season 3 update for the original game, meaning the new update launch didn’t even achieve 5% of this value.
Not only is viewership from the audience on a downturn but so is the excitement among streamers to try out this new update. Looking towards the Peak Channels figure, Warzone 2.0 Season 4 reached a peak of 500 fewer channels than the previous season. With an Average Channels figure of 1175, 31.7% fewer streamers are broadcasting the new update compared to Season 3 of Warzone 2.0. Sadly for these streamers who stuck by and streamed the game’s new content, they also saw 15.6% fewer viewers on average compared to just a couple of months ago.
Most popular channels for Warzone 2.0’s Season 4 launch
Although Warzone 2.0 viewership can still largely be attributed to English-speaking audiences, Spanish-speaking streamers reigned on top for this launch. Mexican streamer ElMariana took the top spot, he reached a peak of 48.7K concurrent viewers streaming the game. However, with 8.2M Twitch followers behind him, this figure actually represents a relatively low point for him.
Following behind in second is aldo_geo, another Mexican content creator. He achieved 12.1K concurrent viewers, but once again with 1.52M Twitch followers at his disposal, the figure of 12.1K represents a relatively normal stream for him, only a 39% increase from his Average Viewers figure over the last 30 days on Twitch.
Next up is ninext, a Brazillian streamer with 144K followers on Twitch. The Brazillian is an avid Call of Duty fan and various titles from the series make up his entire recent streaming schedule. The figure of 10K peak concurrent viewers does actually represent a peak in this case, making it the most popular stream he’s ever had. However, the creator was also competing in a Brazillian qualifier for the World Series of Warzone, which helped spike his viewers.
In fourth place is Recrent, a streamer signed to the Natus Vincere organisation as a streamer. Originally a PUBG competitor in 2018, he achieved solid success in the esports discipline before moving to full-time streaming. The creator mainly has focused on Valorant in recent times but also enjoys playing Warzone. A peak of 9.1K concurrent viewers is enough to land him fourth on our rankings but sadly pales in comparison to his all-time Peak Viewers for Warzone: which is 44.7K.
Moving over to our first English-speaking streamer on the list, Aydan achieved 6.1K Peak Viewers during the first five days of the newest update. Aydan is an ex-professional Fortnite player and now competes in Warzone 2.0, recently winning the World Series of Warzone 2023 NA Stage 1 Finals. He is signed to the New York Subliners as a content creator. His Peak Viewers figure of 6.1K is slightly above average for the streamer as he did receive a slight boost thanks to the new update, but with 3M Twitch followers, he likely would have hoped for more.
Our one and only French streamer on the list, chowh1 took home 6K Peak Viewers, falling just short of Aydan. Chowh1 is another competitive Warzone player who mainly focuses on this game on Twitch, but once again a Peak of only 6K is not what the streamer would have been hoping for. He regularly broke the 6K Peak Viewers milestone last month whilst streaming the Call of Duty title, the new update to the game not bringing the increase in viewership you would expect.
Making up seventh, eighth and ninth are three American content creators. Symfuhny, DiazBiffle, and TeePee are all streamers who focus their efforts on Warzone content, and they have 3.88M, 595K, and 987K Twitch followers, respectively. On average they gather around 3K viewers during a stream at any given point, making these Peak Viewers figures of 4-6K rather underwhelming.
Finishing up our ranking of most-popular streamers is fellow American compatriot HusKerrs. Another competitive Call of Duty esports player, he currently acts as a content creator for Luminosity Gaming. Another example in the list of a streamer with over 1M Twitch followers who only managed 3.9K Peak Viewers on top of the expected excitement from the update, HusKerrs is the final nail in Season 4’s coffin.
All in all, Season 4’s launch for Warzone 2.0 has not been the success that publishers Activision would have been hoping for. Looking at the dynamics of the game, it reached its ultimate peak in April 2021, when Season 3 for the original Warzone title was released. Since then the viewership has been steadily decreasing over time, including both viewers and the channels streaming the game. Average Viewers has seen some spikes as new updates and seasons have been released, but this hype quickly dies down and the game is back to where it started before the update in a matter of months.
The game did receive a moderate spike in viewership as the brand-new Season 4 update dropped, however, if the historical data is anything to go by, this spike will not last long and the game will continue to decline in viewership. It's worth noting although we speak about viewership decline and an underwhelming reception of the update, Warzone 2.0 is one of the most popular games to stream and watch on Twitch. A single lukewarm reception of an update won't change Warzone 2.0’s place in the Twtich ecosystem, and for the moment it remains one of the most popular games on Twitch. The question is, how long does it have left at the top of Twitch?
