As shown by 2020, Twitch continues to attract a wide variety of audiences. While the games continue being the main content of the streaming platform, on an individual basis each of them is still inferior to the Just Chatting category (which is part of the IRL group). As a result, Twitch continues to update its streamer guidelines, introduce new prohibited words, and severely punish the violators. Other than that, the audience of the service continues to spectate the same games, now engaging in this more often and on a larger scale due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Just Chatting takes over Twitch
Twitch has a non-gaming background, considering that the service was originally an offshoot of Justin.tv, with mostly non-gaming content. Twitch had the IRL section from the very beginning, and in the fall of 2018, the administration of the service introduced the Just Chatting section, which began to rapidly gain popularity. Enter the 2021, and the category is currently Twitch’s most active one by a significant margin.
Over the past year the viewers spent 1.96 billion hours on streams dedicated to chatting – which is 2.68 times more than in 2019. Found at the top of the category was the political columnist and streamer Hasan HasanAbi Picker. His broadcasts spanned for 2.85 thousand hours of airtime, with the viewers spending a total of 45.3 million hours watched there – which is one and a half times more than the corresponding indicator of the runner-up, xQc. When it comes to the peak viewers indicator, it was the Spanish content creator Ibai that surpassed everyone, gathering up to 552 thousand peak viewers in his stream on New Year’s Eve.
Just Chatting streams were simultaneously watched by a little over a million people. For now, the category is still inferior to the gaming ones based on this indicator – it was bypassed by Fortnite, League of Legends, as well as Valorant (which collected a lot of hype at the release).
League of Legends versus Fortnite
The top 3 categories saw another switch, with Fortnite losing its second spot (in terms of views) to League of Legends. While both games are still far ahead of their closest pursuers, the MOBA from Riot Games has shown more impressive results in 2020 – and is now the most popular game on Twitch.
In 2019, Fortnite and League of Legends were apart by less than 60 million hours watched. However, in the past year this gap reached 479 million hours. Both games took less damage from COVID-19 compared to other esports disciplines, and Riot Games was also able to host the Worlds, which gathered more than 139,8 million hours watched.
Epic Games refused hosting the World Cup in 2020-2021, thus facing the shortage of views, given that in 2019, the viewers spent more than 25.7 million hours watched on the broadcasts of World Cup qualifiers and finals. Still, over the course of the past year, the game has regularly hosted thematic events, premieres of clips and movie trailers, and even a concert by rapper Travis Scott. The end of 2020 also featured the release of the Galactus event by Epic Games, with the event’s streams generating a total of 3.2 million hours watched.
CS:GO was bypassed by Valorant
The shooter from Riot Games was initially promoted as a direct competitor to CS:GO. Despite featuring the more vibrant and colorful graphics, Valorant largely repeats the game mechanics of Counter-Strike, which is something that the viewers loved. That is why when it comes to the views, the newcomer has managed to surpass the industry veteran by 100 million hours watched (807 million versus 708 million hours).
CS:GO underwent virtually no changes throughout the year. Valve released the long-awaited weapon balance update in the spring, while the next major update took place only in December with the release of operation Broken Fang. Streamers and organizers of esports tournaments helped keep the interest to the game alive; if not for them, the shooter would have lost more than one spot (CS:GO dropped from sixth to seventh spot in terms of views).
Valorant raised a lot of hype at launch. The game set a new record for views per single day on Twitch: 34 million hours watched. Additionally, on the day of the release of the closed beta, the shooter's broadcast was watched by 1.7 million peak viewers – which is the third best result of the year, surpassed only by League of Legends and Fortnite.
Battle Royales – Warzone starts and wins
So far nobody seems to be capable of rivaling Fortnite for the title of the main battle royale – which is why any real competition to be found was for the second spot alone. And in 2020, this race was won by Call of Duty: Warzone, which bypassed both Apex Legends and PUBG by a wide margin.
Until recently, Warzone did not have a separate Twitch category. However, it is Warzone to which Modern Warfare owes the lion's share of its success on Twitch to (as this is where the broadcasts of battle royale took place). The game’s streams amassed a total of 737.5 million hours watched, allowing Call of Duty to surpass CS:GO.
In terms of the peak viewers, the shooter took the sixth spot with its 947 thousand viewers. CoD lost to Just Chatting, Fortnite, League of Legends, Valorant, and World of Warcraft… being only 82 viewers behind the latter!
Aside from Fortnite, Warzone has no competition among other battle royales. In terms of hours watched, CoD got ahead of Apex Legends and PUBG by 2.3 times and 5 times respectively.
Breakthrough of the year — Among Us
In the era of global quarantine, gamers needed something fresh and new. Among Us became such a game in 2020. Namely, it was released back in 2018 (and for some time was on the verge of shutting down) until finally conquering the Twitch in 2020.
Among Us first drew the attention of the streamers at the end of 2019, when it was being covered by some of the Brazilian content creators. It was in the fall when the game became really popular due to getting to the very top of the Stream sales chart. Everyone plays Among Us: TikTok influencers, popular YouTubers, streamers and celebrities – literally everyone from football player Neymar to rapper Logic.
As a result, by the end of the year Among Us climbed to 11th spot on Twitch in terms of views, amassing almost 419 million hours watched (although in 2019 it barely reached 67 thousand hours). Meanwhile, the game has faired better in terms of the peak viewers, managing to enter the top 8 with 774 thousand viewers – ahead of GTA V, Dota 2 and Minecraft.
With the start of the global lockdown, people now had much more time to spend on the Internet (albeit being pretty much forced into such a situation), so the growth of indicators of multiple Twitch sections was not surprising. There was an influx of new viewers and streamers, not all of them interested in the games alone.
IRL sections gained popularity in 2020 (not merely Just Chatting, but also the Music and Art), Twitch started to feature more sports broadcasts, and even the politicians started using the platform – including the President of the United States Donald Trump himself! Twitch is becoming an increasingly versatile service, so the gradual loss of its “gaming-only” identity should come at no surprise.
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