Yesterday, French video game publisher and developer Ubisoft ($EPA:UBI) hosted a live stream of someone photoshopping something. It went up live, without any notice or warning, and simply showcased an artist named BossLogic working on what looked like a painting. It ended up being the cover artwork to a new game, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which is the latest in the longrunning series that is Ubisoft's most popular game franchise.

The stream went on for 8 uninterrupted hours and is the most-watched Assassin's Creed related piece of content ever released on Twitch. 

The stream was listed under 2018's Assassin's Creed Odyssey, since the new game had yet to be announced. This makes our job of comparing the data much easier, since you can clearly see that when Odyssey launched, it was able to hit 100K concurrent viewers once, and then shortly trailed off. The Valhalla stream, without any fanfare or previous note about what it would be or result in, got 200K viewers.

This isn't an indictment of the game, Odyssey is one of the most popular and best-selling AC titles since the series started in 2007. But this next-generation AC game, set in Scandanavia and starring vikings, got enough word of mouth online that it ended up doubling Twitch viewership in a matter of hours. And that was well before the game got an official reveal, title, or trailer.

You can watch a timelapse of the entire stream above, and go to Ubisoft's YouTube channel to watch the first trailer for the game. It's coming out this holiday for both current-gen and next-gen consoles, and PC. 

About the Data:

Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales, and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue, and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales. 

Further Reading: 

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