On September 1st, many streamers took a day off from Twitch to protest the rise in hate Raids aimed at marginalized creators on the platform. Despite what critics of the ADayOffTwitch protest said, the protest appears to have made a noticeable dent in Twitch’s viewership on that day.

First reported on by The Verge, data from gaming analytics company, Gamesight, suggest the protest caused a drop of about 1 million viewer hours on the 1st of this month. To collect this data, Gamesight takes a snapshot of the number of active channels and the total number of watched hours at 12 PM PT every day. Here, it compares the last nine days to the viewership numbers on September 1st. There is a clear drop in viewer hours.

Image courtesy: Gamesight.io

Did the protest really hurt Twitch?

While it might look like ADayOff Twitch made a major impact on Twitch’s viewership, various factors might have played a role in the drop. First, DrLupo and TimTheTatman announced they were switching to YouTube Gaming on September 1st. Both streamers are extremely popular on Twitch and their departure likely affected viewership. It almost seems tactically planned by YouTube to have the streamers announce their departure on the same day as the protest to hurt Twitch’s viewership as much as possible.

Additionally, The Verge suggests that viewership could be down because schools in the U.S. are opening up and Gamescom probably inflated last week’s numbers.

Data suggests the protest did make an impact

Nevertheless, based on the data from various data collecting sources, ADayOffTwitch did impact viewership in some way. However, we currently don’t know if it made a big or small impact.

According to Zach Bussey of CreatorHype, the data suggests #ADayOffTwitch made an impact. It could have lowered viewership anywhere between 5 percent to 15 percent. It’s possible the protest made a more significant impact than expected. It was one of the top 10 trending topics for the entire day.

Regardless, Twitch noticed the protest. The protesters, even if it was just for a day, showed their absence can make an impact.