Reigning king of streaming Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel has roared to a new Twitch viewership record, with more than 300,000 eager fans piling into his already immensely popular channel to watch him play the invite-only Overwatch 2 beta at the height of the long-awaited Blizzard sequel’s hype this week.
On April 27, the French-Canadian streamer rocketed past his old record to hit a new personal best: 312,158 concurrent Twitch viewers, according to TwitchTracker.
The Overwatch 2 hype helped xQc clear his previous Twitch best of 278,176, hit in April this year, by a whopping 40,000 viewers. Before this year’s double whammy, Twitch’s top dog had only broken the 200,000 mark one other time; amid the VALORANT key-drop gold rush in 2020, xQc hit a 222,720-high. So far this year, he has averaged around 78,700 average viewers across 111 days live.
“330,000 people in chat, really?” he said upon seeing his Twitch viewers tick up. “This is crazy, I think this might actually be a record. That’s kind of insane, holy sh*t!”
XQc added that he assumed there were “loads of bots” flooding into his channel in an attempt to get Overwatch 2 beta keys, but was happy to hit the record regardless. “I’m sure lots of people had a lot of things, bots, programs, organized [so that they could get the game], yeah. Kind of weird, but whatever.”
Related: xQc hands Overwatch 2 early tick of approval as beta begins
The French-Canadian star wasn’t the only one to power past old records this week either—Overwatch itself raked in a monster 1.5 million concurrent viewers, which marks the highest day ever for the franchise Blizzard title on Twitch.
Up until this week, Overwatch had boasted a 460,000-viewer peak.
The beta hype fires Blizzard’s shooter to a lofty 12th in Twitch’s all-time highest viewers rankings behind Dota 2, Warzone, CSGO, VALORANT, and League of Legends.
xQc says he’s been enjoying the Overwatch 2 beta so far, claiming it “feels pretty good” to play and praising Blizzard for their Orisa and Doomfist reworks. “I’ve already felt like there were more options to do,” he said. “That feels really fun.”
The invite-only Overwatch 2 beta will run until Tuesday, May 17. To play during the trial period, fans must unlock a key by watching four hours of Twitch streams.
