Apex Legends sees steep decline in Twitch views

Having taken Twitch by storm upon its release in February, Apex Legends’ popularity on the streaming platform has dropped sharply.

According to data collected by StreamElements and StreamHatcher, Apex Legends’ weekly Twitch viewership hours peaked at 40 million shortly after release — a record high for the streaming platform.

The game remained a significant player in March, but peak viewership hours reportedly declined by 75 per cent to 10 million per week.

The decline is largely attributed to top streamers shifting away from the title, which publisher EA launched with a big streamer-led marketing campaign. According to the report, only two of the top 20 Twitch streamers focused on Apex Legends in March, down from 10 in February.

While Apex Legends made a massive impact on Twitch at launch, hurting Fortnite’s viewership numbers in the process, Epic’s battle royale king has since rebounded from its brief wobble to reclaim the top spot on the streaming platform.

The report states that “in February, Fortnite dropped below 100 million hours watched for the first time since conquering Twitch, but it has already bounced back to 118 million hours [in March] showing its resilience in the face of newer releases”.

It’s likely that Epic’s prolific support for Fortnite, which receives relatively frequent updates compared to Apex Legends, has helped maintain interest in the older game while enthusiasm for Respawn’s title has waned.

In March 2019, Respawn Entertainment said that Apex Legends had attracted 50 million players in its first month of availability.

Also last month, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said Fortnite’s registered player base had swelled from 200 million in November to close to 250 million, with a concurrent player record of 10.8 million.