The Game Awards 2023 raised the bar for gaming award show popularity with 3.6M concurrent viewers

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The Game Awards is an annual awards ceremony celebrating achievements in the video game industry, esports scene, and online community. The awards show has been a yearly feature of the industry since 2014, and the attention the show receives increases year after year.

This year’s edition of the awards show was streamed by more than 1000 different channels across various platforms, with some of the internet’s biggest creators focused on the event. The show also is a great opportunity for game developers to announce new titles, DLCs, or updates for their projects. 

The Game Awards 2023 viewership

The Game Awards 2023 received 13.35M Hours Watched, with 4.5M or 34% of this watch time coming from official channels belonging to The Game Awards. The remaining watch time was generated by the other 1180 channels to broadcast the event.

Channels from Twitch, YouTube, Steam.tv, TikTok, Kick, Naver Esports, and AfreecaTV covered the event: a highly international spread of platforms. The awards show was broadcast in almost 30 different languages, with fans from around the world tuning into various watch parties. Of all these platforms to cover the event, Twitch and YouTube were the most popular options for viewers, with both of them being similarly popular. 

Throughout the four-hour-long show, 3M+ average concurrent viewers were watching at any given moment, and 3.6M Peak Viewers made this year’s edition the most popular on record.

Year after year, The Game Awards continues to generate a higher and higher peak viewership. Our database of detailed statistics for the show only goes back to 2018, but it’s safe to say the 2023 event was the most popular one.

Although this year’s edition broke the record of the awards show series, it also recorded the smallest incremental improvement compared to the previous year. 2023’s edition increased the peak viewership of the awards show by less than 200K, whereas the average yearly increase between 2018 and 2022 was over 800K. The 2021 show remains the only year in the past 5 years to not increase peak viewership compared to the previous year.

Most popular gaming showcases / awards shows of 2023

When compared to the other gaming showcases and awards shows that have taken place this year, The Game Awards reigns supreme in both categories. The awards show is more popular than any singular showcase hosted by major gaming companies; The Game Awards features the highlights of the entire industry, rather than highlights of a specific games company.

The Game Awards is hugely popular as an awards show, receiving far more concurrent viewers than any other similar event this year. The Streamer Awards 2023, which was organised by QTCinderella and featured some of the biggest names in live-streaming, was the previous most popular awards show of the year. The Streamer Awards was considered a whopping success at over half a million concurrent viewers, highlighting the incomparable success of The Game Awards 2023.

Categories and Winners of The Game Awards 2023

Most-mentioned announcements by Twitch chat

The Game Awards not only celebrates past achievements of the gaming industry, but it also offers a platform for developers to announce and generate hype for future titles, DLCs, and more.

Some of the most famous and beloved gaming studios and companies announced new titles at this year’s edition, and in total, more than 50 titles, DLCs, and remakes were announced by developers. We selected some of the biggest announcements to analyse how well they were received by Twitch chat. These statistics show mentions of the announcement in global Twitch chat across the whole platform while the event was ongoing.

At the top, with over 50K mentions in Twitch chats, was the new Final Fantasy 16 DLC. Square Enix revealed two DLCs planned for the title: Echos of the Fallen & The Rising Tide. The former of these DLCs released in conjunction with the awards show, and the other will be released in early 2024. 

OD was also quite popular, a new title rather than DLC, and it received 39.9K mentions. Hideo Kojima, famed for his work on Metal Gear Solid, Death Stranding, and more, revealed his newest project, OD. The game is being developed in collaboration with Xbox Game Studios, and comedy writer turned horror director Jordan Peele was announced to be involved too.

Monster Hunter Wilds is the newest generation of the game series, featuring the picturesque nature and diverse fauna fans have come to love the series for. A free DLC expansion for God of War Ragnarök is available next week. Ragnarök was nominated for Game of the Year at last year’s The Game Awards, and fans are excited to get their hands on more gameplay for free.

SEGA also announced five new games in development, including some old-school fan favourites. Jet Set Radio became a cult classic with its innovative art style and unique atmosphere of roller-blading and graffiti, and fans are finally getting a sequel. The announcement served as more of a trailer for the next generation of SEGA games and mentions for all of these titles were included in the total 20.4K mentions figure.

The Casting of Frank Stone is a spin-off from Dead by Daylight, Honkai: Star Rail, which won Best Mobile Game, showed off a trailer teasing the next destination, and Light No Fire is the newest game from Hello Games, the developers for No Man’s Sky.

The Game Awards 2023 highlighted accomplishments and breakthroughs in the past year of gaming, and the many trailers and announcements paint a bright picture of the upcoming years. With The Game Awards more popular than ever before, it's no wonder so many game developers are excited to show off their products at the awards show.

Detailed statistics of all channels to cover The Game Awards 2023 are available for purchase. With over 1.1K channels covering the event and some of the most well-known personalities in live-streaming watching the event, it's a dense collection of all corners of live-streaming.