With 606,000 concurrent viewers at its peak, Saturday’s event wasn’t even in Fortnite’s top 10 most-viewed Twitch streaming moments. In fact, it was one of the game’s least-watched Twitch events according to GitHyp.
The large-scale fight only served to further illuminate Fortnite’s slowly dwindling viewership this past year. While the one-time battle brought in the game’s highest peak Twitch viewer count since February, the game has still seen a major decline.
In the Monster vs. Mech event, a giant robot defeated a monster in an epic duel. This was the mech that was being built at Pressure Plant throughout the last week. The monster, who started off the fight by beating heavily on the robot, had emerged from underneath Polar Peak. But the mech turned the tides of battle when it pulled an orb from the vault in Loot Lake along with a statue from Neo Tilted, which ended up being a giant sword.
Popular Fortnite player Tyler “Ninja” Blevins counted down the event with his friends. They screamed from the rooftops as the monster emerged from the depths. They watched the monster break into the vault until the mech released some rockets right into its unaware opponent.
At one point the fight disappeared from view, which made his squad anxious until they saw the mech slowly swagger back into view once again. The monster leapt on top of the mech, seeming to tear parts of the robot apart. With only one arm remaining, the robot staggered to the orb. This seemed to give him some new power in his remaining limb, which ultimately helped the robot to slay the sea creature.
While Ninja and his fans did seem quite excited by the kaiju-style event, it wasn’t enough to bring Fortnite’s views back to the game’s glory days. Still, the battle royale remains one of Twitch’s most watched games, although new auto battler Teamfight Tactics is not too far behind.
Last month, GitHyp also reported that the Fortnite Celebrity Pro-Am had a massive 72% drop in viewers compared to last year.
Now, Epic Games needs the World Cup to produce a substantial number of views to bring Fortnite back to its glory days. With well-known pros and streamers playing in the event, as well as a $30 million prize pool up for grabs, the large esports tournament is looking primed to do just that.
