Has ‘Shadow Of The Erdtree’ Evolved Live Streaming?

The Award-Winning game ‘Elden Ring’ dropped an expansion, and it’s already topped the charts and taken crowns! So why should you care?

Shadow of the Erdtree just surpassed The Witcher 3’s Blood and Wine expansion as the highest rated DLC ever among reviewers on Metacritic, but why is that important? For starters, CD Projekt Red held the highest rated expansion for 8 years. You’d think they would be upset that they lost their title but it’s actually being received extremely well! In a tweet by Pawel Sasko, the lead quest designer on Blood and Wine, he congratulates FromSoftware for their incredible reviews and success!

Everyone is supportive when this kind of accomplishment comes around, you hardly ever see something have people raving this hard. Shadow of the Erdtree sold 5 million copies worldwide since its release, which was less than a WEEK ago… In terms of online viewership, it became the most watched category on Twitch this past week, racking up 47.24 million hours watched and a peak viewership of 637 thousand people. One streamer named Kai Cenat amassed more than 8 million hours watched during his stream, with peak viewership of over 200 thousand people. 

Things to know

Shadow of the Erdtree has a lot of background information, if you aren’t caught up, we’ll let you in on it. Elden Ring is a video game that was released in 2022 and won plenty of honors at the Game Awards, including but not limited to, Best Narrative, Score/Soundtrack, Art Direction, and most importantly, Game Of The Year. Shadow of the Erdtree is a DLC of Elden Ring, a DLC can also be referred to as downloadable content. To put it simply, it’s a sequel, and in this case, it just so happens to be equally as good as it’s predecessor.

Why does this matter to you?

In the ever-evolving landscape of media, video games continue to evolve and garner more attention by the year, and with the release and groundbreaking hype that Shadow of the Erdtree has brought, it reminds us about the continually rising viewership of video games and livestreaming on the internet. In 2016, the hours watched on Twitch for Shadow of the Erdtree was 5.2 billion hours. Seven years later, in 2023, Shadow of the Erdtree rose to 23.2 billion hours watched on Twitch. That only takes into consideration one of the many live streaming platforms on the internet, many streamers have begun to stream on Youtube, Kick, or Facebook as well. By the day, more and more people are coming to video game live streams for their daily media intake, and Shadow of the Erdtree is a blatant reminder of that.

Shadow of the Erdtree and video games aren’t the only thing inviting viewers either. Live streaming extends beyond video games as well, content creators have begun to host events and fill out stadiums for their internet audiences. In 2023, a Twitch streamer by the name of IBAI hosted a boxing event, a livestream that both filled out a 70 thousand person stadium and averaged around 3 million concurrent viewers, with a peak of 3.4 million concurrent viewers.

The moral of the story is, Shadow of the Erdtree is more than just a DLC for a great game in the community. It’s a reminder of the rising popularity in social media, and how many people are able to gather larger and larger audiences for their streams. The future for live streaming is exciting!