History was made early Thursday morning on Twitch when Drake helped smash the record for most concurrent viewers on a non-eSport stream. A little before 1 A.M. ET, Drake sent out a message on Twitter saying that he was playing Fortnite with popular streamer Ninja and a frenzy erupted.
playing fort nite with @ninja https://t.co/OSFbgcfzaZ
— Drizzy (@Drake) March 15, 2018
Many people that had never heard of Twitch or Fortnite flocked to check out Drake’s play as a result of the tweet, while Twitch regulars flooded Ninja’s stream in order to see him play with a rap icon.
The mix resulted in history being made. The previous record for concurrent viewers on a single Twitch stream for a non-eSport was almost 400,000, set by Dr. Disrespect when he returned to Twitch in early February. While it will take some time to get the official numbers from Twitch, at its highest point, Ninja’s stream received over 600,000 concurrent viewers. Numbers like that are extraordinary as they will be higher than almost any TV channel on during the same timeframe.
Drake’s announcement led to other notable figures getting involved. Rapper Lil Yachty soon joined in on the action, tweeting out that he was playing with the group as well.
https://twitter.com/lilyachty/status/974153221521383424
Since launching in September 2017, Fortnite has slowly built up a pretty big following. Although there have been some complaints about the game’s mechanics, the game has seen a spike in popularity over the last couple months and this will send it into the stratosphere.
For those that don’t know about Fortnite, think of it as a hybrid of an open-world sandbox (like Minecraft) and a multiplayer online battle royale game (like PUBG). Players are able to duel to the death as individuals or in squads and build up fortifications as a map shrinks around them until we go from 100 players to just one.
Although Fortnite isn’t on the same level of other games yet, and doesn’t have a big eSports scene, this will certainly grow the game’s profile immensely. At the time of this post, Ninja was still streaming and the number of viewers was still mind-blowing. A little over 400,000 people were still watching Drake take over Twitch.
