Battle royale giant Fortnite suffered its biggest ever weekly viewer decline on Twitch last week.

Data from The Esports Observer and TEO Audience Insights suggests that numbers fell from 30.9m hours watched the previous week to 26m in the week ending June 10th. That’s a drop of 16 per cent, with average concurrent viewers falling by the same ratio to 157.7k. Its daily average channels fell nine per cent to 9.5k.

However, much of this can likely be put down to the disruption caused by the popularity of E3 scheduling. Also contributing was Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins’ dabbling with other games. He contributed 5.1m hours throughout the week in question, down from 7.1m the week before.

However, Epic’s game is expected to recover in a big way next week on the back of both the very popular Pro-Am tournament and the release of the game on Nintendo Switch – which, incidentally, was downloaded 2m times in the first 24 hours.

E3 effect

A new release from Hi-Rez, Realm Royale, shot straight into the Top 10 at No.8 with 6m hours watched. It’s fairly normal for big streamers to give new releases a go, so it remains to be seen whether the game has any staying power. Ninja, in particular, dedicated 25 per cent of his streaming time to the game last week – his keenness will be a huge determining factor.

Certainly the signs are good, though, with Realm Royale already posting 50 per cent more hours watched than fellow Hi-Rex title Paladins has managed so far this year.

E3 also managed to sneak into the listings as gamers tuned in to watch new game announcements, trailers and gameplay demonstrations. These numbers only include a small slice of the E3 excitement, too, so expect that to be a bigger factor next week.

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