TimTheTatman wins on Twitch by losing at Fall Guys

TimTheTatman played countless rounds of Fall Guys with his friends Cloakzy, DrLupo, and Ninja yesterday, coming close to the most viewers he’s ever had at one time on Twitch. But at the end of the day, with more than 120,000 people watching, the tatted-up big guy was only left with L after L.

Fall Guys, Mediatonic’s goofily-themed obstacle racing game, has drawn a lot of attention on Twitch since releasing at the beginning of August. In the past seven days, it’s moved its way to the second most-watched content on the platform behind Just Chatting.

Naturally, that kind of quick popularity would catch the eye of someone like Tim, who’s always looking for ways to take advantage of new content for his channel. But there was one thing Tim wasn’t prepared for—the difficulty of the game itself. While the party game is made with bright colors and silly character movements, Tim’s lack of skill—or maybe luck—has consistently led him to losses, even though fellow streamers like DrLupo and Cloak have won numerous rounds.

Tim’s misfortune at the game has practically become a meme to the point that people are tuning into his channel to watch his failure—and even the official Fall Guys account is calling him out. 

Calling him “statistically, the worst-performing Fall Guy player in the world,” the official Fall Guys Twitter account has ruthlessly made fun of Tim’s inability to get a win, mentioning him in at least five different tweets in just the past 36 hours alone.

The resulting publicity made Tim’s Fall Guys stream yesterday one of his most successful of the year from a viewership perspective. Averaging 107,847 viewers for the five hours worth of Fall Guys games he played, Tim peaked at 129,018 viewers, according to Twitch stat tracker SullyGnome.

While that’s not quite Tim’s highest viewership peak, it’s close enough that the streamer thought he discovered a groundbreaking formula for viewership.

“This is the most viewers I’ve ever had, and it’s literally a game designed for six-year-olds that I can’t win,” he said after one of his many losses. “Apparently this is the recipe. A very simple game that I can’t win in, and 100,000 people are like ‘hahaha, idiot lost again.’”

Tim’s all-time peak came during the VALORANT closed beta launch in April when he hit 142,067 viewers. Prior to that, he had a stream on March 19 that had 134,187 viewers.

In the past seven days, Tim has played Fall Guys for nine hours on stream with 743,305 hours watched, averaging 63,982 viewers. But as his streak of losses has stacked up, his viewership has grown. It might have to do with the hilarious way that Tim responds to his inability to win, or maybe it’s the connection that losing gives him to his audience that can sympathize with his feelings. 

Perhaps his growing viewership is because people are waiting patiently to see him finally win a single game of Fall Guys, or possibly the attention he’s been getting from Fall Guys on social media is paying dividends for his reach.

More than likely, there’s a little bit of everything at play here. But one thing is certain: People love watching TimTheTatman struggle to beat a party game that many children have already won a round or two of.