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Warframe’s TennoCon 2018 Had 25 Times the Number of Viewers on Twitch Compared to Last Year’s Event

More gamers than ever tuned in to the free-to-play game's third annual live stream to make sure they didn’t miss out on the hype.

July 9, 2018 by

Most Warframe fans would agree, last year’s ‘Plains of Eidolon’ announcement at TennoCon marked the game’s biggest and best moment since it launched five years ago.

But while last summer’s open-world reveal was a pivotal moment for the game, the live stream didn’t draw much attention on Twitch with a peak of only 17k live viewers and 33k concurrent viewers a few days later via popular streamer Lirik’s channel.

This year’s third annual event, however, had more viewers than ever who didn’t want to miss out on the excitement of TennoCon. So many in fact, that Warframe’s 414k concurrent viewers was enough to make it the most watched game Saturday on Twitch — and the second most watched game this week right behind Fortnite.

Compared to last year, TennoCon 2018 brought in 25 times the number of viewers – or an increase of 2335% people watching on Twitch. Saturday’s peak also crushed the game’s previous peak of 88k viewers back in October 2017 when the Plains of Eidolon expansion officially launched.

One of the reasons for the stream’s success was the developers at Digital Extremes enticing their fans to watch on Twitch by giving away free loot drops. Those who tuned in for thirty consecutive minutes with their Twitch and Warframe accounts linked were rewarded with a Ash Prime in-game Warframe.

The increase in viewers also reflects Warframe’s growing popularity on Steam. The free-to-play game’s player base also saw a huge spike during PoE’s launch, peaking at 122k players in October. And more recently brought in 129k players last month for the latest ‘Sacrifice’ story update.

With a new city, hoverboards, and ship-to-ship combat all coming soon in the ‘Fortuna’ update, this year’s event certainly did not disappoint its new fan base. And with the developers’ continued support and even more players soon on Nintendo Switch, TennoCon is quickly becoming another can’t-miss annual event like BlizzCon and E3.

Edit: We originally reported that the viewer count was up 13 times compared to last year, however, viewer counts for TennoCon 2017 were lower than we first thought. The 33k concurrent viewers were actually for a Lirik stream a few days after TennoCon and Digital Extreme’s live stream only brought in a total of 17k concurrent viewers.