Blizzard fans win more than $10k for watching Twitch streams

Whether you tune in to improve your skills or just love spamming dongerinos while listening to punishing Eurotrance, there’s no doubt Twitch has become a major part of PC gaming culture. Blizzard's games are among the most popular on the site and, to celebrate that community, Blizzard and Twitch just handed out $113,000 in award prizes—not just to the most popular streamers, but the most active viewers as well.

For the inaugural Blizzard Stream Awards, three categories were created for each of Blizzard's five main games—Hearthstone, StarCraft 2, World of Warcraft, Diablo III, and Heroes of the Storm—with the top five winners chosen via fan polls that took place earlier this month. An additional six awards were determined by data provided by Twitch, and included ‘Highest Mean Viewership’ and ‘Most Active Chat’. Two of those six categories were awarded to viewers who were the most dedicated to watching Blizzard games.

The awards in question were for the 'Most Active Viewer', given to the viewers who followed the most Blizzard channels, and 'Most Dedicated Viewer' for having the most active subscriptions to Blizzard channels, averaged across 2014. First place in each category was worth $2,014, second took $1,000, and the prizes went down by $100 each time from there. That means ten square-eyed people just split a $10,828 pool just for watching a lot of Twitch. GG, friends.

The biggest winners in terms of the streamers were primarily from Hearthstone, with Trumpsc earning a total of $5,728 for placing fourth as ‘Best Overall Hearthstone Streamer’, third for the ‘Most Engaged Viewers’, and first for both ‘Highest Mean Viewership’ and ‘Most Educational Hearthstone Streamer." He was closely followed by NL_Kripp, who took home five awards and $5,514, while Amazhs scooped three awards for $3,714.

You can see the full list of awards and winners here.