For the first time in the publisher’s history, Ubisoft is taking a crack at creating a video game in the Star Wars universe. Star Wars Outlaws is an open-world, action-adventure title following Kay Vess: A scoundrel hoping to pay off a crime syndicate by pulling off a massive heist. Ubisoft’s knack for open-world games no doubt makes them a great fit for the project, but they still have to compete with EA’s legacy as the previous Star Wars video game publisher.
Star Wars Outlaws is being heavily praised for its atmosphere, leveraging the world-building of the Star Wars universe to create gorgeous settings and charming little moments in scattered civilizations. While a streaming audience may not get to feel the gameplay of the title, they can certainly enjoy these kinds of aesthetic elements.
In this article, we’re looking at how Star Wars Outlaws performed upon its debut on live-streaming platforms, including the impact of early access on viewership and how Ubisoft crafted its Twitch Drops campaign to boost the game’s community.
Star Wars Outlaws Derives Most Viewership from Early Access and Big Name Streamers
With Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft opted to try an early access window where players could pay a little extra to get into the game early (a strategy seen with many other modern releases, including the latest World of Warcraft expansion). As such, viewers on live-streaming platforms were able to watch Star Wars Outlaws from the 26th of August, before the game’s full release on the 30th of August.
It was a foregone conclusion that Star Wars Outlaws would perform well upon release thanks to the big-name IP behind the game. In the early access period alone, Star Wars Outlaws generated 4M hours watched, before ballooning to 5.9M hours watched in total over the next full week of release. This means over two-thirds of viewership came from early access. Clearly many streamers opted to purchase the Gold Edition of Star Wars Outlaws which provides early access and the extra incentive of a unique sidequest featuring Jabba the Hutt.
However, the game could have seen a second wave in viewership upon full release if a couple of factors changed. Star Wars Outlaws faced two issues in reaching a wider audience beyond big streamers: Price point and availability. The game retails for $70 USD, which can be a barrier to lower-income streamers. Additionally, the game isn’t available on Steam – only through the Ubisoft Connect platform or the Epic Games store. Of course these strategies are a fantastic way to transition Star Wars fans onto Ubisoft’s platform, but it can hurt live-streaming viewership by decreasing the number of streamers.
It may be that Ubisoft felt that big-name streamers would be enough to spread the word about their new game – and they’d be right. Mega-popular streamers checked out Star Wars Outlaws, like zackrawrr and LIRIK with 130K and 113K hours watched, respectively. In fact though, it was Brazilian streamer alanzoka who saw by far the highest viewership with 281K hours watched. Diehard Star Wars streamers committed over 40 hours of airtime to the game, including MissMikkaa and Altair with 237K and 169K hours watched, respectively.
The Twitch Drops Campaign for Star Wars Outlaws Requires More Hype
Alongside the game’s launch, Ubisoft is running a Twitch Drops campaign from the 27th of August to the 15th of September in line with Twitch’s Summer of Rewards. This is a smart move: While many publishers only use Twitch Drops campaigns for live service titles, there is a massive Star Wars community that wants to rally behind the game. Although the Twitch Drops campaign isn’t over yet, it’s worth looking at how much viewership it has contributed so far.
Until now, Twitch Drops participating streams have brought in 2.2M hours watched, or 43% of all Star Wars Outlaws viewership. At just under half of all viewership, this proportion is steadily increasing as the campaign moves along – but mostly as a result of non-Twitch Drops viewership decreasing. The issue is: One would expect an ongoing campaign to be bringing in more of a game’s viewership – perhaps two-thirds.
There are most likely two major reasons for this underperformance: Rewards and promotion. Firstly, the Twitch Drops campaign isn’t optimally incentivized. There is only one in-game reward to be earned per viewer: A cosmetic trinket for the game’s vehicle. Additionally, viewers have to buy a sub on Twitch to the participating streamer’s channel to earn the reward, so this trinket isn’t free. Secondly, Ubisoft only shouted out the Twitch Drops campaign a couple of times via their X page. Compare this to the recent successful Twitch Drops campaign for Hunt: Showdown, which featured different rewards each day of the campaign and posted callouts every three days in the lead up to, and during, the campaign.
Positive Chat Sentiment for Star Wars Outlaws on Live Streaming
On the bright side, the fans that have been tuning in to Star Wars Outlaws on Twitch have mostly been enjoying the game. Among all 4.9M chat messages, 16.8% have been positive with 122K chatters sending at least one positive message out of 291K total chatters. That’s a definite swing towards positive reception – a difficult feat for such an entry in a massive franchise like Star Wars to pull off. Chat participation could have been higher with only 16% of all 1.8M unique registered viewers (URVs) engaging with messages.
As Star Wars Outlaws is not a live service title, viewership will start to dip. But there are two DLCs planned for the game featuring fan-favorite characters: The first being Lando Calrissian and the second being Hondo Ohnaka. Stream Hatchet will be watching as this new content releases to see if Ubisoft can boost their community-focused promotional efforts moving forward.
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