It seems that nothing can stop PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Yesterday it was revealed that the game had overtaken Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to become the secondmost-played Steam game by concurrent players. Now, according to gaming livestream stats site Gamoloco, it’s topped League of Legends in terms of weekly hours watched on Twitch.
Check out our PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds guide.
Last week, Dota 2 was riding high in the Twitch charts, backed by an enormous audience for The International, hitting over 30 million hours watched in the last seven days. In second place came PUBG, at 16.9 million hours, while League of Legends languished in third, nearly two million hours behind on 15 million.
This marks the first time that League of Legends has been beaten on Twitch by a game not currently promoting its own professional championships in more than three years of monitoring by Gamoloco. Previously, it’s been common for major esports to swell their numbers around big tournaments, but they always return to normal pretty soon, never challenging League of Legends for the top spot for more than a week or so.
It’s worth noting that no game before PUBG had even challenged LoL for the top spot. No tripe-A game got close, and many esports didn’t either. Even Overwatch, in its heyday around launch, didn’t pose any real threat.
There’s a chance that last week saw some viewers who might have watched League watching Dota instead – the games are similar enough for there to be some reasonable crossover. But it can’t be denied that PUBG has made a significant achievement. So have the players, who have so far won themselves over 10,000 tonnes of chicken dinner.