February 2025 was a strong month for gamers, as several AAA blockbusters and indie gems were released on Steam and others. However, in the German Twitch, people seemed to prefer the survival game Rust from 2013.
What could streamers have showcased? After a longer release drought, February 2025 was packed with several major releases vying for players’ attention. There were:
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
- Civilization VII
- Avowed
- Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
- Monster Hunter Wilds
In addition, some cool indie releases like A Game About Digging A Hole, R.E.P.O, and Sworn came out. And even though these games were all successful, older titles dominated German Twitch.
Monster Hunter only entered the scene at the end of February but quickly stormed the charts on Steam.
Survival Game Benefits from Quarreling Streamers on Twitch
What was happening instead on German Twitch? In the German scene, just like internationally, there was a strong focus on the classics. Long-standing favorites like League of Legends, GTA 5, Fortnite, and of course Just Chatting were at the top regarding viewing hours.
As data from the analytics site Streamscharts, which are exclusively available to MeinMMO, show, the survival game Rust from 2013 was trending on German Twitch. Although the title has been around for several years, it consistently booms on Twitch, especially when larger streamers start a shared server and everything descends into chaos.
In February, MontanaBlack and Zarbex launched a shared server where well-known streamers like Trymacs, Rumathra, and Filow gathered. Such projects thrive on the interaction between streamers: viewers can watch as an influencer invests a lot of effort into a base, only to see it get destroyed in a raid – complete with the affected person’s outburst of rage.
This time it was Trymacs who threatened to quit the project immediately:
Overall, Rust achieved 5.4 million viewing hours in the German-speaking area in February 2025 – a 558% increase from the previous month. This placed it 5th among the games with the most viewer hours of the month, closely behind Fortnite. Rust had its last big boom on German Twitch in 2021.
It repeatedly shows that this social interaction among streamers on Twitch has more pull than big new releases. Thus, the influencer guild OnlyFangs almost single-handedly keeps WoW alive on Twitch.
Interestingly, the two biggest streamers of the month, EliasN97 and Papaplatte, hardly engaged with the trending games. EliasN97 was around in Rust for a few hours but was mainly focused on his own events. Papaplatte, on the other hand, was significantly involved in reviving a browser game, which seemed to attract little interest in Germany after the pandemic.
