Gamers Are Falling Back in Love With Z1 Battle Royale


Z1 Battle Royale, formerly known as H1 Z1: King of the Kill, had a release filled with ups and downs. When it launched back in February 2018, it had 10,000 concurrent players. It then went quiet for a while, before blowing up and reaching over 80,000 gamers at once. Then it fell off a cliff, reaching only 10,000 concurrent players. It had a slight boost from F2P (13,000), but almost immediately fell again back down to only 1,000 players

Credit: Daybreak Game Company

If your head wasn’t spinning enough by this point, it then had an update that brought the number of concurrent players to 4,000. This rollercoaster ends with earlier this month, where it was only managing an average of 250 players online at a single time.

Credit: Steam

Fans thought this was the end of the game, but last week a number of prominent streamers organised a tournament that seems to have breathed life back into this free to play, fast-paced, competitive Battle Royale. Now? It’s right back to where it began, peaking at close to 10,000 players online at a single time. 

Credit: Daybreak Game Company

Who are the streamers making a difference?

It also appears that several high-profile streamers, such as Stormen and IzakOOO, are getting back into the game. Their interest is bringing along their audiences – both old and new fans of the game. Stormen, who claims in a video that “WE BROUGHT BACK H1Z1!”, is second on the Twitch page for Z1BR streams, with 1,800 viewers. Polish streamer IzakOOO also has over 4,000 viewers, whilst Tfue, who has nearly 7.5 million followers, has also chipped in recently by streaming the game for a total of 4.5 hours. It’s clear that the importance of these streamers to the game’s resurgence cannot be understated. 

Credit: Daybreak Game Company

The game’s short-term exposure from the tournament has led to lots of players sticking around. It remains to be seen whether they’ll stick around, or whether this is just another loop in the H1Z1 rollercoaster.

Featured image credit: Daybreak Game Company