State of the Stream for June: Twitch’s daily viewership is on the rise, Diablo IV, ironmouse, and Tarik set new milestones

Welcome to the State of the Stream where we share the latest streaming data around platforms, content creators, and related trends. The following report features narratives crafted by StreamElements based on data courtesy of our friends at Rainmaker.gg.

Twitch’s daily viewership shows momentum

While looking at the peaks and valleys Twitch hits month-over-month tells a visual story, it can be misleading. A big difference maker is the number of days in a month, since one less day represents a big chunk of hours watched. A more accurate barometer is looking at the viewership on a daily basis which is where Twitch is hitting a small but good upward stride. Here is a quick breakdown of hours watched per day over the past four months that illustrates this growth:

• March: 55,033M hours
• April: 55,642M hours
• May: 56,901M hours
• June: 56,919M hours

For additional context, in 2022, Twitch’s daily hours watched from March-June consistently dropped month-over-month. They also dropped from May-June in 2020 and 2021. All of this supports this year’s growth as a sign of positive change.

Gil Hirsch, CEO/Co-founder of StreamElements, summarized it as such:

“Although the overall time spent viewing Twitch over the last four months has climbed and dipped a couple times because some months are longer than others, the trend being overlooked is the daily growth. Since March, the hours watched each day has steadily increased, painting an optimistic picture on the momentum front.”

This month we also included a little factoid about the group of creators generating the majority of hours watched on Twitch. In June, the top 10,000 streamers represented 76% of the hours watched while only making up .5% of the 2 million unique streamers on the platform (based on channels with 2+ viewers). If you dial it down to the top 1000, they represented 46% of the hours watched with the top 100 responsible for 20%. No matter how you slice it, those in the top 1% and less are attracting a lot of the eyeballs.

The 2022 percentages also mirror those from 2023, illustrating how little has shifted year-over-year in terms of how many hours watched each group is responsible for.

Diablo IV soars while most others dive

While viewership of the top categories dipped almost across the board, one game that had no trouble attracting an audience was Diablo IV during its launch. Street Fighter 6 also launched in June, and although it didn’t reach the same peak, it made it onto the top 10 chart which is never an easy feat.

One feel good story that might go under the radar is the incredible month had by Only up! This indie platformer made it to the #12 spot with 25M hours watched thanks to a big boost from top streamers such as KaiCenat and Kamet0.

Launch week debuts from 2022–2023 has tight top 3

We are only halfway through 2023, but Diablo IV has set the bar high with this year’s biggest week for a debut game. Although Lost Ark and Elden Ring had bigger debuts last year, the margin between all three is close enough to make them all winners.

Gil Hirsch made the following observation:

“The biggest winner on Twitch in June was Diablo IV. In addition to being the top game of the month, it had the biggest debut week of the year to date. Compared to last year, Lost Ark and Elden Ring barely surpassed Diablo IV, with the big takeaway being that viewers love legacy franchises as much as new IP.”

ironmouse breaks her own record and tarik takes the crown

The last time ironmouse did a subathon, she set a subscriber record for both VTubers and women…and she just did it again, surpassing her previous record of 171,818 subs with a new benchmark of 205,488 and a spot in the top 10 on Twitch.

Another notable milestone was tarik taking the #1 streamer spot on Twitch for the first time. Frequent chart leader xQc dropped to the runner-up position as he starts spreading his time between Twitch and Kick (xQc streamed a hundred less hours in June than in May). tarik is known for his entertaining analysis of pro Valorant competitions with his co-stream of VCT 2023 Masters Tokyo being a huge draw in June.

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