In times of total lockdown, people began to watch streams much more often. And although the non-gaming section Just Chatting is the leader among Twitch categories by a large margin, games continue to form the basis of the platform's content. We'll tell you which game genres were the most popular in 2020, how much League of Legends influences the success of MOBA, and how Escape from Tarkov broke in the top 5 shooters at the end of the year.
Most viewed Twitch game genres — shooters took the lead
IRL section showed extremely strong growth in 2020, mainly thanks to the Just Chatting category, which became the most popular on Twitch last year, gaining 1.96 billion hours watched. This is 75% of the entire IRL section, which includes Music & Performing arts, Dance and other non-game content. No game can compete with Just Chatting, but there’s still a game leader among the sections on the streaming platform — shooters.
Shooters collected 20.07% of total hours watched in 2020 and were 4% ahead of IRL, the second most popular section. Games of the genre have always been gaining the greatest success on Twitch, which is due to the most spectacular gameplay compared to other genres. Most of the platform's top streamers prefer shooters — TheGrefg, Nickmercs, Ninja, timthetatman, the list goes on and on.
Apart from shooters and IRL, only two game genres managed to collect more than 10% of all hours watched. These are MOBA (13%) and Battle Royale (10.4%). The success of MOBA is primarily because of the popularity of League of Legends amid stagnation of Dota 2. Battle Royale has been at the top for several years thanks to Fortnite, PUBG and Apex Legends, and in 2020 this includes Call of Duty: Warzone.
Sports and Card & Board games were also of great request on Twitch. FIFA traditionally enjoyed tremendous popularity on Twitch, with two versions being included in the top 5 games — FIFA 20 and FIFA 21. Viewers also had a great demand for chess and various sports simulators (including racing) — F1, NBA2K21, iRacing, Madden NFL 21, NHL 21, etc.
Also Read: The Impact of Queen's Gambit on Twitch Chess Viewership
Hearthstone continues to be the undisputed leader among CCGs: the discipline's esports broadcasts transferred to YouTube, but this did not prevent the category from gaining 279.9 million hours watched on Twitch. This is more than Overwatch, PUBG, Fall Guys and the last two FIFA gained in 2020.
The top 10 did not include fighting games and other least popular categories. However, together they add up to 10.35% of total hours watched in 2020.
Most popular games in top genres — shooters got a new leader
Leaders in the shooter category have changed, compared to 2019. Two years ago Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was the top game in the category by a significant margin, but in 2020 it has fallen to third place. The new leader of the genre is Valorant, a newcomer and main CS:GO rival. Riot Games’ shooter was especially popular during the beta test when it has set several records. Overall it collected a total of 807 million hours watched (100 million more than CS:GO) with a peak audience of 1.7 million people (almost twice more than Counter-Strike).
Also Read: Valorant’s First Week on Twitch
Another game that has overtaken CS:GO is the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered. It is worth noting that until recently streams of Call of Duty: Warzone were hosted in this category. Warzone is the newcomer of the year in Battle Royale genre, and this led to the great popularity of the shooter on Twitch. CoD: Modern Warfare scored 737 million hours watched, and up to 835 thousand people watched streams of the game simultaneously.
Two years ago Overwatch was the second most popular shooter on Twitch right after CS:GO. In 2020 it dropped to fifth place, mainly due to the transition of the Overwatch League to YouTube. The game was overtaken by Escape from Tarkov, which experienced strong growth at the end of the year. Just before the New Year the developers launched a holiday event integrated with Twitch, which attracted a lot of viewers. As a result, Escape from Tarkov scored almost 396 million hours watched by the end of the year, which is 2.3 times more than Overwatch.
League of Legends is the #1 Twitch game for the second year in a row with 1.5 billion hours watched in 2020.The MOBA genre hit the top 3 only thanks to Riot Games’ title. The section would be much lower without it, since Dota 2 has three times less hours watched than LoL, and the rest of the games in the genre are even more inferior in terms of hours watched.
Dota 2 has weakened pretty hard in 2020. The International has been postponed, and this tournament has been bringing the game a significant share of hours watched every year. While many other games have seriously improved statistics during the quarantine, Dota 2 has attracted less attention than in 2019. Its popularity fell by 200 thousand hours watched.
Fortnite has once again become the second most popular game on Twitch. Epic Games’ title gained 1.05 billion hours watched, and its peak audience has set a record among all Twitch categories in 2020 — 2.27 million peak viewers.
Call of Duty: Warzone was an extremely successful battle royale game in 2020. However, streams of the game took place in the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare category for a long time. Only by the end of the year CoD: Warzone received a separate section — and even in such a short time it got into the top 4 games of the genre.
It is noteworthy that the fifth place in the top games of the category was taken by the mobile battle royale Garena Free Fire, which gained 73.4 million hours watched and also bypassed both PUBG and Apex Legends in terms of peak audience. The game owes much of its success on Twitch to the Brazilian streamer Nobru, who devotes almost all of his streaming time to this game and even hosts tournaments that gather hundreds of thousands of spectators.
The invincible Grand Theft Auto V became the leader among adventure games on Twitch. Among the games it was surpassed only by League of Legends and Fortnite in 2020. During the year, GTA V scored 811 million hours watched, and Spanish content creator AuronPlay became the most popular streamer of the title.
The most sensational singleplayer game of 2020, Cyberpunk 2077, also got into the top 5. The new CD Projekt Red title took the second place in the genre with 65 million hours watched, and in terms of peak viewers it even entered the top 5 among all categories of Twitch in 2020 — 1.14 million people.
The survival genre stayed in the Twitch genres’ top mainly thanks to Dead by Daylight, but now it is accompanied by Fall Guys and Among Us, the main discoveries of 2020 among multiplayer games. The latter became the genre leader in 2020 on Twitch with 419 million hours watched and 774 thousand peak viewers.
Phasmophobia also performed well. The game had a great start on the release and in October entered the overall top 10 by hours watched. Its total number for the year is 75.6 million hours. At the same time, the title surpassed Dead by Daylight by two times in terms of peak viewers — 254 thousand people.
Rust is also in the top 5. The game received support in the form of a separate server for streamers, created by the group of content makers OfflineTV. This helped to popularize the game's RP-servers. Also the game began to set records in 2021, you can read about this in our upcoming material.
Streams Charts has previously analyzed the most popular Twitch categories of 2020. How Just Chatting is taking over Twitch and why by doing so it changes the overall identity of the platform? The answer is in our article.
