Hogwarts Legacy sets biggest single player record on Twitch with 1.28 million viewers

Hogwarts Legacy completely dominates the Twitch charts with record numbers. In a tweet, developer Avalanche Software confirmed that their new open world Harry Potter RPG reached a peak concurrent viewership of 1.28 million viewers on the live streaming platform. The news broke amid streamer drama, where individuals boycotted the game altogether, due to its association with original author JK Rowling. This milestone perches Hogwarts Legacy as the no. 1 single-player game on Twitch – during launch – surpassing records set by Cyberpunk 2077 and 2022 Game of the Year winner Elden Ring.

For now, Hogwarts Legacy is playable as part of 72-hour early access, granted to those who pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition. (Global launch is slated for later tonight.) The aforementioned numbers, in addition to being one of most wanted titles on Steam, go show how much hype and anticipation Hogwarts Legacy has generated since its first gameplay footage leaked in 2018. According to performance metrics website Gamesight (via Kotaku), the multiplayer FPS title Valorant is currently sits in the top position with a peak of 1.7 million viewers on Twitch, during its launch period. Part of this was fueled by a Riot Games campaign, which granted viewers early access to the game, in exchange for watching participating streamers.

Hogwarts Legacy First Impressions: A Worthy Return to the Wizarding World

Hogwarts Legacy, although ranked third on this chart, comes out on top, generating the most traffic for a single-player game launch. Cyberpunk 2077 is close behind, hitting a peak concurrent viewership of 1.14 million, despite the technical and performance issues plaguing the game at launch. Earlier this week, Félix “xQc” Lengyel, one of the biggest streamers on Twitch, streamed Hogwarts Legacy to over 108,000 live viewers.

According to data-tracking site SteamDB, Hogwarts Legacy amassed 489,139 concurrent players, marking one of the biggest early access launches on the platform. Benji-Sales Game Analyst tweeted that the figure represents the second-highest player spike in history, for any single-player paid game. With these numbers, Hogwarts Legacy dethroned 2015’s Fallout 4 (472,962 peak active players) and stands behind Cyberpunk 2077, which passed the million mark. Second place technically goes to Elden Ring, but it has multiplayer PvP and a summoning element, essentially taking it out of the running. For what it’s worth, the GOTY winner had an all-time high of 953,426 concurrent players.

Despite good traction, some streamers on Twitch struggled to stream it. Harry Potter Author Rowling’s highly controversial comments against the transgender community have drawn backlash from the LGBTQ+ community – some of which seeped into Hogwarts Legacy, in the run-up to launch. While the developer has claimed on its FAQ page that Rowling was not involved in the creation of the game, some fans are boycotting it in protest, as the author still has to earn royalties from the enchanting universe she has. created. A vocal minority in the group have taken to Twitch, as a means of chastising streamers who have chosen to play Hogwarts Legacy. Sam Gibbs, a web developer, even created a monitoring website – now offline – which monitored whether a particular Twitch streamer was playing “THIS magician’s game”.

Hogwarts Legacy launches tonight at 12pm IST (midnight), on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S/X. The older-gen PS4 and Xbox One versions are slated for release on April 4, while the Nintendo Switch version will be released on July 25.