The hardcore shooter “Escape from Tarkov” (PC) suddenly became the most watched game on Twitch at the turn of the year from 2020 to 2021. Top stars of the streaming platform like shroud, summit1g, and xQc showcase the shooter, but specialists from Tarkov like Pestily also reach peak values. The special thing: The success formula of Wipes, Twitch Drops, and little competition worked a year ago as well.
These are the hottest games on Twitch right now: The strongest games in the 3 days after Christmas on Twitch are:
- Escape from Tarkov with 11 million hours, with only 18,600 streamers
- League of Legends with 9.6 million hours, but with 61,150 streamers
- Fortnite with 8.05 million hours, with huge 152,004 streamers
It can be seen in Escape from Tarkov that relatively few streamers can share a huge pie among themselves.
The secret of Tarkov is to take everything away from the players
Why is Tarkov so high up? Escape from Tarkov is an exciting hardcore shooter from Russia that relies on realism. Because players lose their equipment when they die, streams are exciting and situations are often tense. You can’t just die 5 times like in Call of Duty and still feel good because you’ve taken out 12 opponents in the meantime; every death counts and is filled with meaning.
The peculiarity of Tarkov is that there is regularly a “Wipe”. Then players lose everything they have gained up to that point and start from scratch.
Just such a Wipe occurred now at Christmas with patch 0.12.9, which brought new weapons to Tarkov and revised a map. And just such a Wipe is for many players a trigger to come back to Tarkov. Because the initial phase after a Wipe, when everyone starts again from zero, is for many the most exciting time in Escape from Tarkov. Here, every death really hurts, and everyone is at the same gear level.
Additionally, there are Twitch Drops in Escape from Tarkov once again: So it is particularly worthwhile to watch the streamers. Between December 28 and January 8, you can snag in-game items if you watch a streamer who has enabled Twitch Drops.
The popularity of Tarkov is also helped by the fact that there is not much going on in other games at the moment. There are traditionally no major releases or updates between the years. The hype around Cyberpunk 2077 on Twitch is long gone.
Just like xQc, many Twitch viewers can’t stop watching streamers play Tarkov.
Australian Pestily is by far the number 1 on Twitch
What kind of streamers are popular in Escape from Tarkov? Among the 6 top streamers of Tarkov, 4 are the “usual Twitch suspects” and 2 specialists of the game:
- In 1st place is the Australian Pestily, who is an absolute Tarkov specialist and has already played 49 hours in 3 days. He has an average of 102,457 viewers. Thus, he is by far the biggest streamer on Twitch right now.
- In 2nd place is summit1g, the continuous grinder from Twitch, who has already played 40 hours
- In 3rd place is LVNDMARK, another Tarkov expert
- In 4th place is the nice DrLupo
- In 5th place is shroud, the man regarded as a shooter expert
- And in 6th place is xQc, who rides every hype wave
This is what it’s about: Escape from Tarkov has found a strategy to be the number one on Twitch for several weeks a year. The combination of Twitch Drops, Wipe, and a “quiet time without competition” works perfectly.
With this pattern, they have already achieved success several times. Just a year ago, at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, Escape from Tarkov was the number one on Twitch. Even then, Pestily was at the forefront.
It seems like this will become a new gaming tradition à la “The same procedure as last year, James.”
A year ago, there was already a huge hype around Escape from Tarkov. Back then, many players started anew with the shooter and quickly realized that they reached their limits, even if they were experienced shooter veterans. But Tarkov is just different in some way:
8 beginner tips for Escape from Tarkov from one of the best players
