Who’s benefited the most from xQc’s recent Twitch ban?

XQc was temporarily banned on Twitch last week. This isn’t the first time he’s been forced to take a break from streaming—and based on his reputation, it might not be the last either.

Despite his semi-regular troubles with Twitch’s terms of service, xQc has risen to the top of the platform as one of its most prominent personalities. And his absence begs the question of what his audience will do while he’s not streaming. 

In the past year, no channel on Twitch has more viewership than xQc. With a whopping total of 132,443,699 hours watched, he’s nearly 20 million hours watched ahead of second place, Portuguese CS:GO streamer Gaules, according to Twitch stats website SullyGnome.

XQc’s recent ban due to breaking stream-sniping rules during a Twitch Rivals Fall Guys tournament at GlitchCon is only a seven-day suspension. But there are few streamers on the platform who consistently generate the audience that he does.

As one of xQc’s friends and fellow Twitch partner Nick Polom put it, by banning the hyperactive former Overwatch League pro, Twitch has “unleashed a swarm of bees.”

Polom is referring to the ravenous nature of xQc’s chat room. In addition to having a highly watched channel, xQc is also known for having a Twitch chat filled with about as much chaos and spamming that the platform can allow. 

With an xQc-sized hole in Twitch for the past few days, it’s unlikely that his viewers simply took a break from the platform for a week. While his stream and audience are a caricature of Twitch culture, they still embody much of what the platform has created over the past nine years.

In his final two streams before being banned, xQc averaged more than 50,000 viewers over more than 20 hours of airtime.

Because of how many hours watched Twitch produces on a weekly basis, it’s impossible to say that xQc’s absence has resulted in fewer viewers. In fact, in the past three days, the platform has seen more viewers than it did the three days prior. Finding xQc’s viewers will require looking at individual channels themselves. 

It’s difficult to determine exactly where those viewers could have gone, but based on xQc’s standing as a variety streamer, viewership statistics are suggesting content creators like Mizkif might be housing refugee xQc fans.

While other friends of xQc like Sodapoppin, Nick Polom, and Greekgodx might come across as potential alternative channels, the viewership of those channels over the past week hasn’t changed notably since xQc’s suspension.

Instead, Mizkif, another variety streamer, has seen increased viewership. Over the weekend, Mizkif’s Just Chatting streams dedicated to a new grassroots esports organization he’s a part of called One True King (OTK) resulted in more than double his average viewership during the work week.

Mizkif’s “OTK Thanksgiving” on Saturday, Nov. 21 and Charity Pokémon box opening event on Sunday, Nov. 22 had more than 53,000 and 70,000 average viewers, respectively.

Though the one-off, special event nature of those streams could be the predominant reason for Mizkif’s weekend success, a missing xQc could have played a role as well. In the past month, xQc and Mizkif have shared numerous categorical interests on Twitch, including Just Chatting and Minecraft. 

Meanwhile, viewership in the past week for many other top personalities like NICKMERCS, TimTheTatman, and Asmongold hasn’t seen any marked incline. 

It might not be possible to pin down exactly what xQc’s viewers are up to while he’s been away, but there’s a strong chance that at least some of them are spending some time with Mizkif.