The extent of Fortnite’s domination on streaming service Twitch appears to have been underestimated.
Just this week a report claimed that Fortnite amassed total Twitch viewing hours of 65.44m in February. That put it way ahead of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (43.33m) but somewhat behind the top placing League of Legends (80.71m).
However, PC Gamer reports that alternative data from SullyGnome shows that Fortnite is now bettering even League of Legends, with over 5,000 years’ worth of gameplay having been viewed in the last two weeks.
That only places it ahead of League of Legends, but is also double the 2,517 hours of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds that has been watched.
The rate of growth is also pretty impressive. In December Fortnite was streamed by 2,000 channels to around 40,000 viewers. Currently it is being streamed by around 6,500 channels with viewer numbers hitting 150,000. PUBG, in comparison, features on about 4,000 channels with viewers of 65,000, ranking it behind both League of Legends and Counter Strike: Global Offensive.
Not Bots
Yesterday it was reported that streamer Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins has seen his subscriber count double in the last two weeks to 100k on the back of Fortnite’s popularity. Some alleged that at least part of this success was attributable to people purchasing Twitch bot accounts to claim the current Fortnite loot that’s available for Twitch Prime subscribers.
Speaking to Polygon, however, Twitch has said that it can find no evidence of funny business and puts Ninja’s popularity purely down to Fortnite.
“It’s awesome to see so many players jump on the Battle Bus with the Twitch Prime Fortnite offer,” a spokesperson commented. “We’ve seen large numbers of players trying Twitch Prime for the first time, getting free loot, and using their first monthly free channel subscription. It’s great to see many broadcasters getting a bump from these new Twitch Prime members.
“New members are subscribing to these popular Fortnite channels and we haven’t seen any indication of bot activity.”
