If you’re a gamer and you’ve not yet jumped into the world of live streaming, you’re one of a rapidly shrinking number of players.
It’s been widely reported that one industry which has benefiitted from the Coronavirus pandemic, is videogames. Thanks to lockdowns across multiple countried, the number of players, the number of hours played, have all risen globally.
However, only now have we found out that live streaming, which has huge amount of game-based content has also gone a little viral (sorry).
Dominating!
Analytics from StreamElements and Arsenal.gg report that Twitch dominated livestreaming with over 5 billion hours of content watched on the platform in Q2 2020.
This was a rise of 56% from Q1, with a peak in viewing coming in April with 1.8 billion hours watched. That’s an annual 60% increase, from 939 million hours in June 2019, to 1.5 billion in June 2020.
Farmville No More
Facebook Gaming also saw some significant gains. The platform experienced a 75% increase in hours watched in Q2, compared to Q1, peaking with 342 million hours watched in May 2020.
Facebook Gaming experienced 200% annual growth, from 111 million hours in June 2019, to 334 million hours in June 2020.
GTA V = 3rd
To bring it a little closer to home, Scotland’s biggest export, Grand Theft Auto V is the third most popular Twitch channel, with the number of hours watched not dipping at all in 2020. This makes it the year’s most viewed action game so far.
However, it’s not just videogames which have benefitted from the increasing popularity of streaming.
Twitch’s most popular channel is Just Chatting, which grew 94% from 86 million hours watched in January to 167 million in June 2020. In annual terms, Just Chatting grew 175% from 2019 – 2020, from 181 million hours in Q1 2019, to 498 million in Q2 of 2020.
‘Live’ Music
It was also good news for Music & Performing Arts which received a huge surge in popularity with a 268% increase in hours watched from January to June 2020, with a peak of 25 million hours in May.
You can read the full report on the Stream Elements site, for a breadown of all of the various streaming services, games, campaigns and most popular streamers.