Indie tactical FPS Escape from Tarkov beat out games like Fortnite and League of Legends in Twitch viewership today, owing its sudden success to a Twitch loot drop promotion. Developed by Russian studio Battlestate Games, Escape from Tarkov is currently playable in beta for those who pre-order.
Similar to games like those in the ARMA series – which spawned mods like DayZ and led to the development of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds – Escape from Tarkov leans heavily toward the hardcore side of first-person shooters. It combines PvE and PvP in an open survival map, where players can pick one of two classes: Scav and PMC. Scavs start with a random loadout, looting the map for better gear as they go. If a Scav player makes it to an extraction point without dying, they’ll keep all the loot they collected, which is then transferred to that player’s PMC character. PMCs act like a traditional “main character,” defeating enemy player and AI Scavs and carrying loot over from match to match. But if a player dies as a PMC, they lose all their equipped loot and will have to collect more as a Scav.
The “Scav, PMC, Scav” gameplay loop is an engaging one that’s sure to attract a good number of viewers, but today’s Escape from Tarkov’s Twitch ratings were eyebrow-raising. Esports reporter Rod Breslau shared a screenshot of the Twitch “Browse” page early this afternoon. The screenshot shows Escape from Tarkov had 167,000 concurrent viewers, and Breslau said Twitch streamer Pestily alone had more than 70,000 viewers. According to TwitchTracker, Escape from Tarkov’s previous peak viewer count occurred yesterday, when it had a maximum of only 75,852 viewers over the course of the day. This huge increase in viewership was almost certainly caused by an Escape from Tarkov Twitch Drops promotion. By watching qualifying Escape from Tarkov streams, players can earn in-game weapons, gear, and items. Breslau also attributed part of Escape from Tarkov’s success to Battlestate’s promotions with streamers like Michael “shroud” Grzesiek, who often streams the game. Ironically, shroud left Twitch for Mixer in October 2019. At the time of writing, shroud had only about 3,500 viewers watching his Escape from Tarkov stream on Mixer, while Twitch’s Pestily had almost 63,000.
Streamers like shroud are part of what seems to be a mass exodus of content creators from the Amazon-owned Twitch to other streaming platforms. It began with the platform’s most popular streamer, Ninja, leaving Twitch in August. Since then, many others have also abandoned Twitch for other streaming sites. Shortly after shroud left, Destiny 2 streamer KingGothanlion left Twitch for Mixer, and streamers like DisguisedToast and CouRageJD left for Facebook Gaming and YouTube Gaming.
While many would assume how much Mixer is paying Ninja and these other streamers is the cause of their sudden platform changes, it could be deeper than that. After he left, Ninja’s manager explained why he left Twitch, saying the company was not listening to Ninja’s desires to grow his brand. Business differences like these may have also had an impact on the other streamers’ decisions to leave, but it’s hard to count out money’s role entirely. After all, Twitch reportedly paid millions to DrLupo, TimTheTatman, and Lirik to keep the streamers on its platform.
The Escape from Tarkov Twitch promotion will be active from now until January 5.
