Michael “shroud” Grzesiek has become the undisputed king of Twitch since Apex Legends was released earlier this month.
Stats website TwitchMetrics shows that shroud’s channel has been the most watched of the streaming platform in the last 30 days, with over 12 million hours watched. He’s got more views than League of Legends developer and tournament broadcaster Riot Games, which sits in second place with a bit over nine million hours watched.
Related: Everything You Need to Know About Shroud
Famous Fortnite: Battle Royale streamer and the face of Twitch, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, is not on the top 10 and is now the 11th most-watched channel on the platform. He’s behind fellow Fortnite and Apex streamers Turner “Tfue” Tenney, Tim “TimTheTatman” Betar, and Guy “DrDisRespect” Beahm.
The growth of shroud and the fall of Ninja are most likely related to Apex. The game hurt Fortnite numbers on Twitch and decreased its viewership considerably after it launched, making it the third game to lose more viewers three days after the release of Apex. That means Fortnite streamers were also affected by this and had their viewership numbers decreased.
Though Ninja has also begun streaming Apex, he’s now got more competition for viewership. Shroud was already a big battle royale streamer who streamed games other than Fortnite, so when both he and Ninja moved to Apex, they became competitors. That partly explains why Ninja is out of top 10 and why shroud dominates Twitch.
Apex has shaken up Twitch numbers, and upcoming events in the game and in Fortnite will probably change things up even more. While Apex is getting a new weapon today, Fortnite’s season eight starts on Feb. 28. What happens in both games in the next few weeks will surely shake up things even more in the most watched streamers ranking.
