Twitch Viewership Declines Following #ADayOffTwitch Campaign

Twitch saw its viewership drop significantly after livestreamers both big and small refused to go live on September 1 to protest the ongoing hate raids.

According to The Verge, Twitch had nearly one million fewer hours watched and more than 14,000 less channels live on September 1, the day of the #ADayOffTwitch campaign. When compared to data compiled by gaming analytics company Gamesight from the eight days prior, the dip is obvious.

For example, August 25, a week before the scheduled protest, saw some 4,083,518 hours watched and 189,472 channels live. September 1's numbers looked starkly different: 3,456,576 hours watched and 171,682 channels live. It's worth noting that all figures were culled at noon each day, long before the campaign ended, and thus they con't reflect the full day's reduction in viewership.

However, there have been some recent events that might have affected the platform's viewership. Two huge streamers, DrLupo and TimTheTatman, both jumped ship, departing from using Twitch to stream exclusively with YouTube Gaming. And while Gamescom could have bolstered the numbers a bit with its myriad developer and publisher presentations from the gaming convention, US students are also returning to campuses, meaning fewer people are using the platform in general.

But even in the face of these factors, according to streamer data analytics firm CreatorHype, Twitch's viewers still dropped by between 5% and 15%.

The goal of the #ADayOffTwitch campaign was to urge Twitch to enable better tools that safeguard marginalized creators, frequently the targets of hate raids. For the uninitiated, a hate raid is an organized assembling of (sometimes bot) accounts that flood chats, often directing bigoted and derogatory messages toward the livestreamer.

In response to both the hate raids and the protest, Twitch said on Twitter that it was aware of the campaign and supports those content creators who participated in the blackout. The company also said it wants to have an "open and ongoing dialogue about creator safety" in the wake of the continuing hate raids. People online, though, particularly those who organized the #TwitchDoBetter and #ADayOffTwitch campaigns, are saying Twitch's "open dialogue" is nowhere near good enough.

Still, following the protest, streamer and #TwitchDoBetter campaign organizer RekItRaven said they had a meeting with Twitch and that the company is "working actively" on some proactive tools.