Hogwarts Legacy is completely dominating the Twitch charts with record-breaking numbers. In a tweet, developer Avalanche Software confirmed that their new open-world Harry Potter RPG hit a peak concurrent viewership of 1.28 million viewers on the live-streaming platform. The news broke amidst some streamer drama, where individuals completely boycotted the game, owing to its association with the original author J.K. Rowling. This milestone perches Hogwarts Legacy as the no. 1 single-player game on Twitch — during the launch period — surpassing the records set by Cyberpunk 2077 and 2022’s Game of the Year winner Elden Ring.
For now, Hogwarts Legacy is playable as part of a 72-hour early access, granted to those who pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition. (The global launch is set for later tonight.) The aforementioned numbers, alongside it being one of the most wishlisted titles on Steam, go to show how much hype and anticipation Hogwarts Legacy generated since its initial gameplay footage leaked in 2018. As per the performance metrics website Gamesight (via Kotaku), the multiplayer FPS title Valorant currently stands in the first position with a peak viewership of 1.7 million on Twitch, during its launch period. Part of it was fueled by a Riot Games campaign, which granted viewers early access to the game, in exchange for watching participating streamers.
Hogwarts Legacy Early Impressions: A Worthy Return to the Wizarding World
Hogwarts Legacy, while positioned third on that chart, comes out on top, generating the most traffic for a single-player game launch. Cyberpunk 2077 falls right behind, reaching 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.
As per data tracking site SteamDB, Hogwarts Legacy amassed 489,139 concurrent players — marking one of the biggest early access launches on the platform. Games analyst Benji-Sales tweeted that the figure represents the second-highest player peak in history, for any paid, single-player-only game. With these numbers, Hogwarts Legacy has dethroned 2015’s Fallout 4 (472,962 peak active players) and stands behind Cyberpunk 2077, which broke the 1 million mark. Technically, the second place goes to Elden Ring, but it has a multiplayer PvP and summoning element to it — essentially removing it from the race. For what it’s worth, the GOTY winner had an all-time peak of 953,426 concurrent players.
Despite gaining good traction, some streamers on Twitch have been going through a hard time trying to broadcast it. Harry Potter author Rowling’s highly-controversial comments against the transgender community inspired backlash from the LGBTQ+ community — some of which seeped into Hogwarts Legacy, as launch time neared. While the developer affirmed 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 stands to earn royalties from the enchanting universe she created. A vocal minority of the group took to Twitch, as a means to berate streamers who chose to play Hogwarts Legacy. Sam Gibbs, a web developer, even created a watchdog website — now offline — that monitored whether a particular Twitch streamer played “THAT wizard game.”
Hogwarts Legacy launches tonight at 12am IST (midnight), across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S/X. The old-gen PS4 and Xbox One versions are set for an April 4 release, while the Nintendo Switch version drops July 25.