Diablo 4 Twitch viewership hits rock bottom with 99% drop since Season 1 launch
Blizzard EntertainmentDiablo 4’s post-release has been tumultuous for Blizzard with a passionate community unafraid to voice their displeasure. Any thought of waiving this off as a vocal minority falls off in the face of hard data which now shows a crushing 99% drop-off in Twitch viewership since Season 1 launched.
Diablo 4 began its tenure with such promise. The game broke sales records for Blizzard and reviewed incredibly well. Dexerto’s own five-star review contributed to its 88 overall Metacritic score.
While there’s certainly fun to be had with Diablo 4, the game’s live service model and perceived lack of content have left fans who expected more feeling “scammed”. This has all been compounded by poorly received balance changes coinciding with the launch of Diablo 4’s first seasonal update.
While Diablo 4’s development team has made some inroads in repairing the damage, the game’s reputation has taken a massive hit in the process. The results of this have become painfully apparent in the game’s Twitch viewership which hovers just below 1,000 at the time of writing.
To put things into proper perspective, according to SullyGnome, Diablo 4’s peak viewership at the launch of Season of the Malignant on July 20 was 278,672. It’s peak viewership has dropped to 2,783 on September 9. A 99% decrease in peak viewers.
The average daily viewer statistics for Diablo 4 tell a similar story showing a drop from 114,212 average daily viewers to 1,492 in the same time period. This is another 99% drop-off in viewership.
While a decrease in viewership is common for Seasonal games, these numbers are an anomaly for AAA titles. Baldur’s Gate 3 which launched shortly after Diablo 4 currently has close to 22,000 viewers and the game’s biggest competitor Path of Exile has nearly 14,000.
The numbers here show a significant decrease in interest surrounding Diablo 4 in a year that has been stacked with massive releases. The mood on the game’s Subreddit has been notably grim with many players claiming the game is “dead”.
Players are claiming that they will not be returning for Diablo 4’s second season given the current state of the game. “Once the credits had rolled, and I saw what I was expected to do in order to keep playing, I set the game down and haven’t really touched it again,” one user said.
It remains to be seen whether Diablo 4 can fix this retention issue with the release of more content. The second seasonal update Season of Blood launches on October 17 and the numbers will surely speak for themselves.