The online game Fortnite Battle Royale was a hit on the streaming platform Twitch in 2018 and 2019. But in the new year, the long-running favorite is losing steam. The statistics in January 2020 were as bad as they were last in January 2018, before the boom.
What’s going on now? In the last 30 days, in January 2020, Fortnite has continued to decline on Twitch, averaging 72,000 viewers. The game has lost about 16% of its viewers compared to December 2019, even though 12% more hours were streamed.
Fortnite is now in 4th place on Twitch in the “Hours Watched” category, behind LoL, the trending game Escape from Tarkov, and the chatting category “Just Chatting”.
In December, Fortnite was still in 3rd place. The last time Fortnite was in 1st place was in August 2019.
Fewer streamers played Fortnite before, but for more viewers
Is it the streamers or the viewers? With the new numbers from the last 30 days, Fortnite is significantly below the figures from February 2018. This is not due to fewer people playing Fortnite on Twitch, but because fewer people are watching.
While there were fewer Fortnite channels in February 2018 than today and fewer hours were streamed, there were still more viewers back then:
- In February 2018, 5135 channels streamed an average of 3.446 million hours. In the last 30 days, 5905 channels streamed an average of 4.351 million hours.
- Two years ago, there were 19 viewers for each Fortnite streamer. Today, there are only 12.
- Back then, an average of 97,904 viewers watched Fortnite – today it’s only 72,349.
January 2020 was the weakest month on Twitch since January 2018.
What is the reason? Fortnite seems to have taken a creative break for the last two months. The current Season 1 of Chapter 2 is taking much longer than normal seasons.
Therefore, many players have already filled out their battle pass and have hardly any reasons to log in, except for occasional special events.
The eSports of Fortnite has almost completely come to a standstill, and patches have become rare.
Epic seems to have withdrawn for some time. Players are now hoping for a revival with the start of Season 2 on February 20 and the new physics engine.
The impression that Fortnite has lost its spark after the big event with the black hole is increasingly solidifying.
During the event in October, a black hole swallowed the Fortnite map and the game was unplayable for 2 days. Then, “Chapter 2” started Fortnite on a new map with a calmer playing style without many crazy features that were added in 2018 and 2019. In addition, the development pace has slowed significantly.
This new, decelerated “base” Fortnite is apparently showing signs of fatigue.
The Fortnite hype on Twitch over the last 2 years
When did the Twitch hype for Fortnite begin? Fortnite launched on July 25, 2017, as a “normal” game, back then “Fortnite: Save the World” was a PvE co-op game that hardly interested anyone on Twitch. The numbers are tiny compared to later.
The Battle Royale mode came out in September 2017, and it was put together in record time. It took only a short time to get into full swing:
- The first notable spike was experienced by Fortnite in October 2017 – at that time Fortnite suddenly had an average of 21,000 viewers on Twitch and steadily grew from there.
- In January 2018, Fortnite had an average of 61,000 viewers on Twitch.
- In February 2018, there were 98,000 – it was clear: Something is happening.
- Starting from March 2018, Fortnite took off on Twitch; this was the moment when Fortnite entered the mainstream, the then Twitch star Tyler “Ninja” Blevins streamed with Drake – an average of 160,000 people watched.
When did the Twitch hype fade?
- In February 2019, Fortnite dropped significantly for the first time, going down to 125,000 viewers, from which Fortnite could recover somewhat with the hype around the Fortnite World Cup.
- Sustainably downwards began in September 2019, where Fortnite for the first time fell below 100,000 – with the “black hole” event and Chapter 2, Epic could only briefly respond in October.
Since November 2019, Fortnite has stayed well below 100,000 viewers. With January, it finally reached a lower value than before the hype began.
