Inside the Twitch Meta: xQc is the meta

Games, and especially esports, have always had a constantly evolving meta. Recently, gaming platforms have also adopted quicker changes in what people are watching -- leading content creators to stream new games, styles and genres. Twitch has always had a subtle meta, but with the explosion in viewers over the pandemic, that meta became more defined as streamers elevated new and old games alike to top places on Twitch.

During 2020, Chess, Fall Guys, Among Us and more have all experienced spikes in popularity leading them to dominate gaming content. Alongside those games is the rise of Just Chatting bringing more variety into the top channels on Twitch as streamers hop in and out of titles with more regularity. Inside the Twitch Meta will be a recurring segment on Nerd Street Gamers as we look at how the Twitch meta has changed frpm month to month. Here is April’s meta; now let’s take a look at May’s.

Methodology note: The stats in this article were compiled by looking at the previous 30 days of Twitch stats from May 26th making this an accurate look at Twitch trends in May but not an exact measurement of total viewership for the month. The data is sourced from a combination of Twitch Tracker, Streams Charts, SullyGnome and Twitch Metrics and is cited where applicable. There are some small differences in stats between sites even when following the same parameters, but every stat is close to where it appears on the other sites as well.

Despite LoL’s boost from Mid-Season Invitational, GTA V widens gap on top of Twitch

Unlike other titles that have experienced a brief moment in the sun over the past year, it seems like GTA roleplaying is getting comfortable in its spot on top of Twitch. Like in April, the second-most watched game was League of Legends -- although both games still trail Just Chatting.

Despite League of Legends having the game’s second largest annual event in the international Mid-Season Invitational during May, GTA V actually increased the gap between the two games in terms of total hours watched according to Sully Gnome. In April, League of Legends had 150 million hours watched, and MSI bumped that up to 171 in May. For GTA, viewers watched 230 million hours in April, and that number rose to 259 million in May.

Read more: Royal Never Give Up are kings of League of Legends again with MSI win

So Riot Games putting together one of the most comprehensive international events esports has to offer brought in less of an increase for LoL than Felix “xQc” Lengyel continuing to meme in GTA. And while xQc is the dominant streamer of the game by far, GTA V often stays as the top game even when he isn’t live as 8-10 channels all pull in 10-20,000 viewers.

xQc has doubled up the second largest streamer in hours watched

In April, Ludwig Ahgren’s subathon obscured just how popular xQc is becoming. Without that 24/7 stream, xQc’s dominance on Twitch can be properly measured. In May, xQc was watched for 39 million hours. Second place was Portuguese streamer Alexandre “Gaules” Borba at 15 million hours. That discrepancy is ridiculous, but it gets crazier because xQc streamed for about 360 hours in May, while Gaules streamed for 715 according to TwitchTracker. In half the time, xQc nearly tripled the total hours watched of the next largest streamer on Twitch. He held a consistent average of over 100,000 viewers during the entire month.

His peak, however, was lower than many other channels at about 220,000. According to TwitchMetrics, 18 other channels reached a higher peak viewership than xQc in May, but none came anywhere close to matching the level of consistency it takes to average over six figures while streaming 360 hours.

Those crazy peaks also netted the second-most-watched Twitch stream of all time, and once again, a streamer from Spain made it happen.

Spanish streamers are officially the champions of the 1 million viewer mark

Not counting esports events, the 1 million-viewer mark felt untouchable for years. Tyler “Ninja” Blevins’ stream with Drake was the high water mark on Twitch at 667,000 viewers. Now, a select group of streamers not only have been able to pass Ninja, they’ve passed the 1 million-viewer mark. They all speak Spanish.

David “TheGrefG” Canovas Martinez owns the world record on Twitch (or YouTube for that matter) with an insane 2.5 million viewers when he announced a new skin based around himself and DragonBall Z in Fortnite. But the first person to hit 1 million viewers was actually Ruben “El Rubius” Doblas Gundersen back in 2018, except he accomplished the feat on YouTube.

This month, another streamer joined the two commas club: Ibai “Ibai” Llanos Garatea. He becomes the third Spanish-speaking streamer to accomplish the feat that no English-speaking streamer has been able to accomplish. According to a Dexerto article, two Indian streamers and a Russian streamer have both also accomplished the feat on YouTube, but the data wasn’t directly sourced, and I wasn’t able to independently verify it.

Ibai and the other Spanish-streamers feats are well documented however. In that group of Spanish streamers, Ibai is also the first to pass 1 million viewers without the power of Fortnite’s reach. The streamer took the trend of popular personalities boxing, which largely started with Jake and Logan Paul, then made an entire evening out of it featuring Spanish content creators with himself as the host/commentator. 1.5 million people watched, and he didn’t even have to get punched in the face.

It reached the second-most viewers of any Twitch channel including esports events. Both ELEAGUE and PlayStation have also crossed the two-comma mark on Twitch in the past according to TwitchMetrics, but the only individual streamers to do so are all from Spain.

Trending Up: Subnautica: Below Zero, Slots

At the top of Twitch, there is surprisingly little movement among the most popular game titles. The top eight games (and Just Chatting) over the last 365 days are the same top eight as the last 30 days according to Sully Gnome. But when moving down the leaderboard a bit, we can see some trends starting to take hold. One game and one category are both trending up quite a bit.

Subnautica: Below Zero is an open-world action-adventure survival game that is absolutely guaranteed to make people even more afraid of the open ocean. That’s called thalassophobia, in case you were wondering. After getting a full release on consoles in May, the game shot up the Twitch charts with 10 million hours watched over the last 30 days. Originally released in 2019, the game’s rise represents nearly a 7,000% increase compared to the 30 days prior according to SullyGnome. That speaks to some new popularity, but that kind of rise is only possible with a truly dead game prior to the console release. (Like peak viewers less than 100 kind of dead)

Subnautica got a huge boost last month upon fully releasing. Image credit: SullyGnome

Hasan “hasanabi” Piker, one of the biggest channels on Twitch, has been tacking the original Subnautica game onto the ends of his Just Chatting streams as well. It’s a good time for the franchise.

Another category seeing a rise is Slots. Over the last 30 days, Slots is the 13th-most-watched game or category on Twitch according to SullyGnome. Over the past year, it's the 21st-most-watched game or category. The rise of 50% over the last 30 days isn’t as dramatic as Subnautica, but rising from 20 million hours watched to 32 million in a month is a larger change than Subnautica’s total hours watched in May. The rise is largely thanks to xQc who has always enjoyed gambling content but has been primarily led by Trainwrecks and Roshtein in hours watched.

The rise of Slots. Image credit: SullyGnome

Talking about slots should come with a caveat: please don’t burn your money. I’m not anti-gambling, but as a guy who lives in Las Vegas, I know a few things about odds on casino games. Every game in a casino gives the house an edge, that’s to be expected. Still, table games like Blackjack, Roulette and Craps all offer bets that return 1-1 about 45% of the time depending on the bet, the house rules and how it’s played. Slots, on the other hand, are literally computer-designed algorithms to take all of your money. Especially with online slots, you’d be better off picking a meme cryptocurrency and putting your money there. It’s less risky, and that’s saying something.

Biggest fallers: Escape from Tarkov, Rust

In April, the biggest game to truly fall out of the meta was Among Us, and that trend has only continued in May. But when it comes to the biggest percentage drops, both Escape from Tarkov and Rust are giving Among Us a run for biggest faller.

For Rust, the drop has been happening for some time now. There was a period of time where OfflineTV and friends were playing the game consistently leading it to some really lofty viewership peaks. That was in January though. Since then, those peaks are only getting smaller as big creators come back to the game intermittently. Now, Rust is down 80% compared to the last 90 days and has fallen out of the top 20 titles on Twitch.

Rust peaked in January. Image credit: SullyGnome

There are two ways games get huge boosts on Twitch, either by releasing outright or on more platforms, or enabling some drops. Escape from Tarkov’s boost was the latter.

Escape from Tarkov was originally released in 2016, but in December of 2020, the developers enabled unique loot drops, and it boosted the game like crazy. Even after the drops ended in early January, the game remained fairly popular. Since then, it’s been on a steady decline in terms of average viewers. It may trend back up again in the future, but for this May, Escape From Tarkov is definitely out of the meta.

Lead image credit: xQc/Instagram