Ubisoft’s new battle royale, Hyper scape, it was officially announced today in an unconventional way: rising to the top of the Twitch charts. Ubisoft has been teasing the game, which leaked earlier this week, with a fake company website and via cryptic Twitter updates. Starting at 12 p.m. ET, the game was activated in a technical testing phase, when various Twitch and YouTube personalities were allowed to start streaming the game, and just 30 minutes later, it has amassed nearly half a million viewers. The publisher is planning an official reveal live stream for 2PM ET.
Ubisoft’s strategy here is reminiscent of Respawn’s abrupt surprise release Apex Legends and Riot’s Twitch-centric beta Valorant. The developers of both games used streamers and a direct marketing approach to create organic appeal to the game beyond the standard media cycle of most big-budget game releases. And it seems that Ubisoft is doing the same here.
We have much more to share on #HyperScape later today.
Tune in to the official live broadcast behind the scenes at 11AM Pacific / 2PM Eastern for new footage, game details, and more.
– Hyper Scape (@HyperScapeGame) July 2, 2020
Of course, we don’t know exactly what goes on behind the scenes, as if any of these streamers are getting paid to play right now. Hyper scape It doesn’t have a specific release date right now because Ubisoft hasn’t issued any kind of message about when it’s going into beta or really anything else about the game right now.
But Turner “Tfue” Tenney, best known for playing Fortnite, currently attracts more than 50,000 viewers who play the game as the most viewed channel on the platform. Dozens of other streamers are also playing the game for a massive audience. So whatever Ubisoft is doing here is clearly working.
