Twitch July viewership saw Diablo 4 fall off the top 10

Diablo 4 had enjoyed a couple months of high-level viewership on Twitch, but updates in July brought a lot of criticism and backlash from the player community.

Image via Blizzard Entertainment
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With another month comes another State of the Stream report from StreamElements, and a certain high-profile game is missing from this month’s numbers. After enjoying a wealth of attention in a couple different months, Diablo 4 has fallen off of Twitch’s top 10, making way for games like Teamfight Tactics and Apex Legends, whose new content has had them seeing surges of attention.

StreamElements released its July 2023 State of the Stream report with data from its analytics partner at Rainmaker.gg on August 10, 2023. One of the most notable details on this one was the complete lack of Diablo 4 from Twitch’s Top 10. Back in March 2023, Diablo 4 first broke into the Twitch top 10 during one of its beta sessions. When it launched in June 2023, it easily skyrocketed to the top of the Twitch top 10 games with 156 million hours viewed. Now, in July’s report, Diablo 4 is nowhere to be found.

Twitch Top 10 for July 2023
Teamfight Tactics and Apex Legends had significant new content and updates that helped them break past a weakened Diablo 4 to take Twitch's top 10 viewership in July 2023.
Source: StreamElements

While some of the drop-off in July’s State of the Stream could be attributed to the hype dying down for Diablo 4, there’s more to it than that. Diablo 4 suffered enormous backlash in July following the release of the Season of the Malignant. When a variety of endgame builds were nerfed and other areas of the game were bugged by the season, the criticism was so heavy that Blizzard addressed it directly in a Campfire Chat livestream and promised more transparency going forward. Nonetheless, there was a lot to do to make it up to the game’s playerbase.

Teamfight Tactics and Apex Legends also got significant new updates and content reveals, pushing them into the Twitch top 10 as Diablo 4 was staggering. It will remain to be seen if Diablo 4 can find its footing and make it back, but for the time being, it seems to be out of the winner’s circle on Twitch.

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    August 10, 2023 9:58 AM

    TJ Denzer posted a new article, Twitch July viewership saw Diablo 4 fall completely off the top 10

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 12:01 PM

      I'd love to see active player numbers of that game since launch, I'm assuming they cratered after 4 weeks

      • reply
        August 10, 2023 7:23 PM

        The said 7 million new characters created in season 1

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 2:53 PM

      I was going to go in and play my Rogue some more (just filling in world area/Lilith shrines/waypoints) before opening seasonal; I played Elden Ring some instead.

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 3:02 PM

      I'm deeply bored by Diablo IV now. :(

      I barely started a Season 1 character, but was just fell off of it hard.

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 3:17 PM

      1.1.1 seems good now but 1.1 was so bad for PR for them.

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 3:26 PM

      I've been having a blast with Heroes of the Storm

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 3:39 PM

      I watched exactly enough Diablo 4 on Twitch to get the various drops.

    • Zek legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
      reply
      August 10, 2023 4:06 PM

      The way the game is right now, it simply can't sustain continuous gameplay throughout the season. So it's more seasonal in the sense of one month on, two months off. I'll be back for season 2, and I expect they'll improve it over time.

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 4:11 PM

      i tried the new season and the gimmick was boring and grindy

      like, i did one of the dungeons and couldn’t even do the last heart thing because i didn’t have enough reagents?

      evidently i needed to craft some shit? i was literally town portaled out googling what the fuck was going on

      huge L

      • reply
        August 10, 2023 4:13 PM

        also i dunno if i was doing it wrong but i had to run everywhere even though the campaign was complete

        that felt boring

        like i found every altar and waypoint in eternal.
        hoofing it to some dungeon i wasn’t able to complete because i literally needed to craft some dumb shit

        bad

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 4:16 PM

      I regret buying it to be honest. Especially now after Baldur's Gate 3 showed what a AAA game of that caliber should be. Diablo 4 feels boring mechanics wise, plays it too safe and is utterly uncreative. The always online functionality has absolutely no benefit for the player, only causes problems and breaks immersion and the micro transactions and battle pass are absolutely unneccessary.

      • reply
        August 10, 2023 4:18 PM

        i was really expecting the heart thing / seasonal buffs to wind up being cool / engaging

        they lost me on the literal first gameplay loop. huge design failure

        someone should kick off the season and get a demo of why the season rocks really fast. you have an opportunity to sell people on it. they went the grindy route hoping people just cared enough to stick with it

        glad theyre allocating a lot of metrics. make it super apparent how bad they fucked up

      • reply
        August 10, 2023 8:07 PM

        They’ll continue to improve it over time, if their track record w D3 and D2 are any indication

      • reply
        August 10, 2023 9:54 PM

        What micro transactions?

      • reply
        August 10, 2023 11:40 PM

        I agree with your post but I don’t regret buying it. I might be firing it up regularly ten years from now. Doubt bg3 will be

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 4:35 PM

      I enjoyed my initial time with it, levelled a druid to 87or something, and 100% will return to it, but probably not for a while since my slate is full with BG3, Cyberpunk, GoW, Hogwarts etc

      But def will return... Diablo lasts forever...

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 4:36 PM

      I just don't think it's a very entertaining game to watch, I watch twitch streams of other games I no longer play, but even when I did play I never found it to be particularly good for streaming. That combined with the dwindling user base means much fewer people watching.

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 5:59 PM

      There's not really much to do in end-game. Run a few nightmare dungeons until you're max level and then you're left with nothing. Trying new builds is okay, but it's such a headache walking back through the paragon board.

      There's nothing to craft / create. There are no end-game bosses. There's no real item chase. There's no timed instances / leaderboards.

      Somehow they made nightmare dungeons as boring and uninspired as possible.

      The game is pretty bare bones; it's fun for a few weeks / month but I'm already getting bored of it. Not what I expected from a 2023 release to be so empty and undeveloped.

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 6:07 PM

      I'll finish the pass since it forced me to activate it - then bail for other games. BG3 / 2077 DLC / AC 6 are all coming out soon

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 6:18 PM

      back to PoE until the sequel

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 6:54 PM

      So is there even a cow level to this damn game?

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 7:20 PM

      Never came close to finishing it.

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 7:24 PM

      I'm still loving it. Playing with a friend.

    • reply
      August 10, 2023 8:19 PM

      Thank feek for the open beta

    • reply
      August 11, 2023 12:09 AM

      I put in over 300 hours and will probably put in hundreds more after they fix the game. It's not bad, it's just a bit soulless and overly basic. All the dungeons feel roughly the same, there's no surprises (besides the Butcher) or cool secrets. There's not many usable and actually fun builds. Some of the side quests are ok, but all the content is clearly formulaic. Some of the acts were good. I'd prefer to replay some of the better acts to level up each season. (Redoing renown and side quests feels awful.) By season 3 or 4 it should be worth logging in consistently.

      I hope it doesnt continue on the WoW route of templated expansions, quests, maximizing metrics like logins, hours played etc. Where each xpac/season is just more of the same. Hope they can figure out how to keep it fresh like PoE does. I dont want to play this every day for years, just 40-100 hours every season.

    • reply
      August 11, 2023 12:34 AM

      It's really bothered me that I had to start a new character for this season. I am still enjoying playing my other one but I can't if I want to do the season stuff.

      I don;t know why this doesn't bug me in POE but it sure is in D4

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