The golden age of each Battle Royale game on Twitch

The Battle Royale genre has grown very quickly in a short time. We’ve been through the battle royale genre’s flagships – Fortnite, PUBG, H1Z1, Apex Legends, and Black Out – all represented by the numbers on Twitch.

H1Z1 sparks Battle Royale

When the battle royale was not yet popular, H1Z1 was the name that was mentioned at the top. H1Z1 first launched in Early Access on Steam in January 2015.

At the time, the game didn’t have any competition in the battle royale genre: It was the only title if you wanted to experience the battle royale genre at the time.

Unfortunately, Twitch didn’t keep a close eye on games in 2015, compared to now, so we have very little data on H1Z1’s viewership. Notably, Twitch has gradually become a popular platform since 2015, as noted by TwitchTracker.

PUBG – the next stage of Battle Royale

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegroundns launched in March 2017, once again on Steam Early Access. It takes battle royale to new heights, attracting gamers from all over the world.

The game is more realistic thanks to the giant Erangel playing map. However, on Twitch, PUBG only surpassed League of Legends in terms of players by just a few months: August and September 2017.

Fortnite, the most popular game ever?

PUBG was a hit, but the next Battle Royale game, Fortnite, just became the icon of the gaming industry. Launched in July 2017, Fortnite quickly surpassed PUBG in terms of viewership on Twitch in January 2018 and has never lost a game.

Since then, there hasn’t been a week where PUBG’s average continuous viewership has been higher than that of Fortnite – showing how successful Epic Games has been with its game. Fortnite also overtook League of Legends a month later, and despite having a shorter stint than Epic Games’ #1 game, Fortnite is still more popular. To this day, Fortnite remains the most viewed game on Twitch.

Even Call of Duty is participating

Given the huge success in the battle royale genre, even Call of Duty has decided to compete. With Black Ops 4, we have Blackout.

Since Twitch doesn’t distinguish between Black Ops 4 multiplayer and Blackout, the numbers are somewhat inaccurate. However, as far as we know, since the game’s launch in October 2018, it peaked at 286,000 viewers: at the time it was the most popular game on Twitch.

That’s not too surprising, thanks in part to the appeal of the Call of Duty franchise. However, the game quickly declined, with viewership dwindling to an average of 75,000 in just the first week of November. This shows that while Blackout might rival PUBG in terms of viewership, Fortnite is still is the most famous game.

Apex Legends – early bloom soon die?

Another big name suddenly appeared – Apex Legends. All of a sudden, EA announced its newest battle royale game in February 2019.

Beyond EA’s own expectations, Apex Legends’ viewership skyrocketed, quickly topping Twitch’s charts. Any major streamer – whether Dr Disrepect, Shroud or Ninja – was mostly streaming the game at the time.

Currently, Apex Legends holds the record for most viewers in a week, and the game achieved that feat just two weeks after its launch.

However, Apex Legends’ popularity soon went down – and it happened very quickly. After just a month, the game lost to Fortnite and after 6 weeks it was even worse than GTA 5 – however, Grand Theft Auto 5 role play is exploding right now.

Apex even lost to PUBG, reaching 14,000 average viewers. Since then, Apex Legends is slowly returning with the presence of Season 2.

For the past 7 days alone, as of July 27, Fortnite is still the most watched game on Twitch, accounting for 9.5%. Meanwhile, Apex Legends ranked 11th, with 2.6%, slightly better than PUBG, currently standing at 2.5%.

According to Dexerto