It may be the end of an era on Twitch. Ninja, the current most popular live streamer and the face of Fortnite, has fallen in subscriptions to the point where he's reportedly no longer in "first place." As of TwitchStats' latest update, Summit1G has surpassed Ninja's total subscription count with 42,943 total sub points (tier 2 and tier 3 subs count as multiple subs). Even more surprising is Summit1G's game of choice: Sea of Thieves.

Summ1G is a variety streamer, meaning he plays any number of games month-to-month, but focuses on competitive multiplayer games. Returning to Sea of Thieves, Summit1G brought that aggressive, competitive mentality with him. He's well known for sneaking aboard enemy ships, hiding, and then either sabotaging them in a dire moment or robbing them blind when they're not looking.

This brand of gameplay, or at least Summit1G's dedication to hit, has proven extremely popular on Twitch. Though, to be fair, some of Summit1G's actions have been described as griefing and his brand of expletive-laden smack talk is creating some controversy within the typically easygoing Sea of Thieves community. Nevertheless, Summit1G's popularity has created a surge on Twitch for the game, with more streamers joining the trend every day.

twitch subscriber count summit1g

Note that Summit1G's advantage is limited entirely to subscriptions, which are premium and grant access to exclusive emotes while removing ads. Ninja still has a staggering 13 million to 3.5 million advantage in followers, 404 million to 259 million total views advantage, and still manages a higher average viewer count per stream. But with regards to subscriptions, which tend to denote a streamer's dedicated viewer base, Summit1G has taken the lead.

To keep things in perspective, as of April 2018 Ninja reached a peak of over 250,000 subscribers. This was within a month of his now-legendary Fortnite stream with musician Drake. His numbers have fallen as of late while the competition for streaming Fortnite has grown significantly and viewers lean towards streamers more to their taste. Fortnite itself has dropped in total viewership too, losing well over 30% of its audience between mid-2018 and the end of the year.

[Note: The report comes from third-party Twitch scraper TwitchStats, which tracks all manner of subscriber data using Twitch's API. TwitchStats acknowledges a margin of error of 5%. Twitch itself doesn't release official subscriber counts, so TwitchStats is as reliable of reporting that there is.]

Sea of Thieves is available now on PC and Xbox One.

Source: TwitchStats