Another year, another edition of the highly popular Awesome Games Done Quick was held, with 2024's version ending on January 21. This charity marathon that sees speedrunners from across the world battle it out while raising money for various institutions witnesses around a week of non-stop action and broadcasts across numerous popular games, seeing several records set along the way.
This winter iteration of the more famous Summer Games Done Quick festival returned to a live setting at the Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It aimed to raise money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation — a US-based charity and one of the leading health organizations in the nation devoted to the early detection and prevention of cancer.
The Awesome Games Done Quick 2024 collected over $2.5 million for cancer research and saw a pretty amusing highlight of a dog — named Peanut Butter — beating Gyromite Nintendo's NES classic from 1985. World records were also broken in:
- Luminescent (41 minutes, 36 seconds)
- Celeste Strawberry Jam Collab (49 minutes, 13 seconds)
- Sega Saturn's Virtual Hydlide (27 minutes, 11 seconds)
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (30 minutes, 24 seconds).
Viewership statistics from the Awesome Games Done Quick 2024
Across 158h 5m of airtime, this speedrun extravaganza hit 100K Peak Viewers during Ecdycis' speedrun of the legendary mystery survival game Silent Hill 2 early on January 16. It also managed 10.4M Hours Watched and 66.4K Average Viewers, with Peanut Butter — a Shiba Inu — also attracting much attention for becoming the first canine-assisted speed run at these charity events.
Moving to languages, English remained the dominant force, taking up over 88% share of the overall watch time across the seven Twitch channels live broadcasting the event. This was a rise of 1.44% from last year's edition, with French being the next-best language at 4.32%, although this was a minute fall of 0.28%. Japanese also saw a decline of 1.25%, falling a spot to third as a result.
English also had an eerily similar peak concurrent viewership figure to 2023, hitting 90.1K people. Moreover, there was an almost constant stream of raids on these live streams through the week of action, with lots of users and other channels discussing happenings on chat.
Speaking of chat, over 496K messages were sent across the marathon on the main broadcast channel. The number of active chatters came down to around 15.4K, and audience engagement was 1.6%.
GamesDoneQuick also received 16.8K subs, of which 28% were gifted. It also earned between $26K to almost $43K per live broadcast from subs (depending on the regional subscription prices), while revenue from Bits was $9.1K. The highest donation per message was 50K Bits.
Most popular speedruns from the marathon
As already mentioned, the live stream of the speedrun of Silent Hill 2 ended as the most popular one, ending as the sole video to hit the 100K PV mark. Super Mario 64 was second as the only other game to touch 95K PV, with CZR responsible for its speedrun.
Third was the speed run of Lies of P by blanxz which managed a solid 93.2K PV, followed by Halo: Combat Evolved and Hades, with these two attracting over 88K PV. That they spanned different genres and tastes within the video game industry was a testament to the diversity of the Games Done Quick series.
The Awesome Games Done Quick 2020 remains the most popular event in the series, having hit a significant 263K PV; it remains the high point so far. With 2021 signaling a move to the online mode, the audience numbers reduced and they continue to decrease despite a return to in-person action.
However, these events continue to draw a hardcore base of viewers, spectators, and players every year. Most importantly, they have helped raise over $49M in charity over the last 14 years, with organizations like Doctors Without Borders, Malala Fund, Organization for Autism Research, and CARE benefitting immensely.
Fans of the concept don't have to wait long for the next tournament, as the next marathon is an all-women speedrunning event — Frost Fatales. It will also held online from March 3 to 10 and look to raise funds for the National Women’s Law Center.
