On September 28, Minecraft Live 2024 took place, a major annual online event focused on upcoming features in the Minecraft universe. This year, Mojang Studios shared news about a new biome called The Pale Garden, along with details about an upcoming movie based on the franchise, set to release in April 2025.
The highlight for viewers was the presentation of The Pale Garden biome and the introduction of its inhabitant, the tree-like monster known as The Creaking. This segment saw the broadcast peak at 687,000 concurrent viewers.
Minecraft Live 2024 was covered by over 100 unique channels, 1.5 times more than last year. The presentation was streamed by many of the same channels as before, including both official broadcasts and popular community casters. However, notable streamers like alexelcapo and KreekCraft, who covered Minecraft Live last year, were absent this time around.
The main audience for Minecraft Live 2024 tuned in on the official Minecraft YouTube channel, which accounted for half of the total watch time for the event. YouTube continues to be a key platform for these promotional events: nearly 80% of all streams took place on this platform, outperforming Twitch by four times.
It’s important to note that Minecraft Live 2024 attracted a noticeably smaller audience compared to last year. For example, the average number of viewers dropped by 43%, with the biggest decline happening on the official Minecraft YouTube channel, where average viewership fell from 442,000 to 250,000. This marks the third consecutive year of decline for the metric. A similar trend is seen with the Bobicraft channel, which consistently ranks among the most popular during Minecraft Live presentations.
As in previous years, the primary languages for Minecraft Live were English and Spanish. However, both languages experienced a significant drop in average viewers, with their numbers decreasing by 40%.
Most popular Minecraft events and tournaments in 2024
Despite the drop in statistics, Minecraft Live 2024 emerged as the most popular Minecraft event of the year, surpassing various esports competitions like Twitch Rivals.
Overall, this year has seen a downward trend in audience engagement for Minecraft. There are currently fewer show tournaments in the style of Twitch Rivals, and none have come close to hitting a million viewers at peak. In 2023, the most popular event attracted an impressive 1.68 million Peak Viewers (Twitch Rivals Squid Craft Games 2). As for Minecraft's performance on Twitch, total watch time and average viewership have decreased by 34% compared to last year. By the end of the year, the game risks dropping out of the top 10 most popular categories of the platform.
