The year gone by has been another that saw multiple ups and downs, and perhaps no streaming service reflected this better than the biggest one of them all. In 2023, Twitch continued to be a dominant force in the live streaming world, with growth and changes across various fronts. However, it also saw lots of policy changes and controversies, sometimes one intertwined with the other.
Most viewed categories on Twitch in 2023
| Place | Name | Hours Watched |
|---|---|---|
| #1 | Just Chatting | 3.072B |
| #2
|
Grand Theft Auto V
|
1.313B
|
| #3
|
League of Legends
|
1.311B
|
| #4
|
Valorant | 980.95M |
| #5
|
Counter-Strike | 673.87M |
| #6
|
Fortnite | 613.69M |
| #7
|
Minecraft
|
574.57M |
| #8
|
Dota 2
|
546.81M |
| #9
|
World of Warcraft
|
432.5M |
| #10
|
Apex Legends
|
398.15M |
The year began and ended on a high for the purple platform, with March and December being its two best months in terms of crucial metrics. All four were almost identical when looking at the quarters, although the purple platform did hit records for Active Channels, Peak Viewers, and Peak Channels in the last month of the year.
Sticking with quarterly results, the best one for Twitch last year came in the first and last three months, which tied at 5.28B Hours Watched each. However, this was clearly a fall from 2022, where the only quarter to do worse was Q4, that too by a faction at 5.27B HW. All the other quarters hit at least 5.5B HW, showing that the average number of viewers spending time watching a particular unit or video was much lesser in 2023 thanks to the increase in the number of options available when it comes to streaming services, especially when looking at upstarts like Kick or sites that saw a renaissance of sorts, like Rumble.
Twitch also saw slight declines of 6.8%, 6.8%, and 5.0% in its three major metrics — PV, HW, and AV. Nevertheless, the Peak Channels count saw a huge gain of 24.6%, alongside the total streamers being active shooting up by 11.2%, so not everything was in the red.
Most watched Twitch categories
Twitch's most watched category last year was Just Chatting with 3.07B Hours Watched, a negligible drop of 2.2% from the previous calendar year. Some of its busiest content creators globally included Kai Cenat, HasanAbi, xQc, 우왁굳, and ibai, with the French-Canadian superstar's numbers deserving of special praise considering he began alternating his broadcasts on Kick midway through the year and was not as active on the site as he was in previous years.
Tied for second place are two games that saw banner years, although for different reasons. Grand Theft Auto V and League of Legends are two titles that are more than a decade old but continue to rake in viewership numbers thanks to the contrasting skills and strategies involved in their gameplay.
When it comes to the former, its Online component and the fame of RP servers, saw the much-awaited announcement of its successor in early December. Moreover, the new VCR GTA gaming RP server's launch attracted numerous top influencers from Japan.
Riot Games' legendary MOBA, meanwhile, cemented its status as the numero uno esports discipline globally with the record-setting 2023 World Championship. This highly coveted season-ending event attracted many more broadcasts to also help it notch 1.31B HW.
Next, come two FPS titles that were at opposite ends of their lifespans but showed why they are the most followed names in their genre. Valorant continued to improve on its esports scene with more top-tier tournaments and unforgettable action. On the other hand, CS:GO bid an emotional goodbye around in the fall, leaving behind countless memories for its fans, who now have a new game, Counter-Strike 2, to sink their teeth into, with its first Major announced for Copenhagen in March 2024.
The bottom five names on this list include names that have become staples of the esports and streaming worlds, with Fortnite perhaps enjoying the biggest success among them heading into the new year thanks to its highly lucrative OG Season update. However, alongside Apex Legends, it joined the top five in seeing falls in their yearly watch times.
The three titles that did see increases in their year-on-year HW stats are Minecraft, Dota 2, and World of Warcraft. This trio has logged pretty loyal fanbases across the world, including prominent streamers, meaning they continue to enjoy a good screen time and have distinguished esports segments. Regardless, the Valve offering's most renowned tournament may just have been altered irreparably in 2023, so it remains to be seen how it maintains its relevance in the new season.
Additionally, across 2022 and 2023, the two segments — gaming and IRL — shared almost identical shares of the platforms' overall watch time. However, the former did see a 0.3% boost, reflected in the fact that there were 12.6% more games streamed last year compared to the previous one.
Both segments did see declines in their overall HW shares, another indication of the varied interests of audiences in 2023 and the plethora of options they had to catch entertaining content online. The absence of platform regulars like AMOURANTH and xQc during the second half of the year was a definite negative, as the duo constantly made such year-end most-watched lists until 2022 before deciding to branch out to alternate broadcasting on Kick.
Most watched Twitch streamers
Kai Cenat capped off a breakthrough year by ending it as the most-viewed channel thanks to a stunning rise of 68% from his 2022 figure. Readers must note that the American held a subathon earlier in 2023 that helped him break records and confirm his space among the Amazon-owned streaming service's elite. Apart from improving all major numbers, he also gained an astounding 4.9M followers, the second-most over these 12 months.
Next is Gaules, the Brazilian renowned for his frequent Counter-Strike live broadcasts, making him especially famous in his home country. The Brazilian also took the time to try out other titles like War by Grow Games and Night of the Dead, apart from streaming live action from matches in the Sports categories.
Rounding off the top three is ibai, the Spanish superstar whose brainchilds, the Kings and Queens leagues, have helped him become more of a transcendental figure than he already was at the start of 2023. It must also be noted that he had a milestone event of his own, with the La Velada del Año III boxing tournament's broadcast becoming Twitch's most popular ever.
Canada and Japan's most famous stars on the purple platform — xQc and fps_shaka — come in at fourth and fifth, respectively. The former saw his usually high airtime come down due to splitting his activities with Kick, but he remains one of the most in-demand names. The latter was a beneficiary of the new VCR GTA gaming RP server, which helped him become December's most viewed content creator and continued his reign as one of the foremost names for the game in Asia and the world.
Valorant star tarik also had a busy year, with his watch time year-on-year almost remaining the same, although his regular broadcasts of some of the most popular events in the discipline helped him see improvements in his peak and average concurrent viewerships in 2023. The lone South Korean here is 한동숙, a member of his native organization Charon's content creator roster. He is known for his gameplay videos of titles like Lost Ark and Teamfight Tactics, apart from also being a regular in the Just Chatting genre.
HasanAbi, eliasn97, and IlloJuan are the last three names here, with their watch times sitting between 60M HW and 63M HW. They are known for their interests in various genres, including Just Chatting, EA Sports FC 24, Fortnite, and Pokémon Community Game, and are leading names in the live streaming spaces of their respective nations of the USA, Germany, and Spain.
Most watched Twitch organization channels
Kings League was the lone organization channel to make it to the overall top ten channels leaderboard for 2023 and hence tops this organization table. Three seasons have confirmed this entertaining football league as one of the biggest non-esports events within the Hispanic online live-streaming community.
ESLCS is second thanks to the various CS:GO/CS2 tournaments it held across the year, and with the former game calling time on a glittering run, the demand to see its last few events was very high. Following it in third is otplol_, the official French broadcaster of all things related to League of Legends in the country.
Fourth is Fextralife, the popular American video game community and news resource run by a team of dedicated gamers that provides game-related news, reviews, and guides. Rounding off the top five is BLASTPremier, another elite organizer whose Counter-Strike competitions are some of the toughest and most followed every season.
The bottom five names are an amalgamation of official handles and those run by fans to cover a particular game or event, including LoL and Dota 2. Interestingly, GamesDoneQuick is a famous organization that conducts speedrun competitions in various video game titles multiple times every year and has become famous for this unique concept.
Language dynamics on Twitch
The top three languages across the last 12 months remained the same as in 2022, with English, Spanish, and Portuguese filling the podium. However, English did see a slight decrease of 3.18% in its share of the overall watch time, while the other two saw very marginal gains.
German and Russian exchanged places when it comes to the fourth and fifth spots, fueled by the latter's 14.8% rise and the former's negligible difference in YoY figures. The likes of Nix, just_ns, and betboom_ru were key to this resurgence for the Eurasian nation in 2023, with most of them seeing above 39% increases, at least, in their watch times. Most of this improvement was due to their high activities during Dota 2 competitions and other events surrounding the legendary MOBA.
Speaking of growth, the biggest movers in this metric were Ukrainian, Greek, Tagalog, and Japanese, each logging at least 37% progress in their Hours Watched figures. Ukrainian also owed much of its advancement to its content creators giving Dota 2 lots of attention, while Counter-Strike was another game that came up time and again. Turkish was the other dialect to see a bump in its watch time, going up by 9.2% last year.
Moving to the other extreme, we have the likes of Dutch, Hindi, Danish, Italian, and Slovak that saw their Hours Watched counts fall across 2023. Worryingly, these declines were pretty stark, ranging between 20% to 34%, although these languages' contributions to the overall Twitch cause remain minimal.
After a groundbreaking 2023 in lots of ways, 2024 has begun with excitement and a sense of anticipation in the streaming community. Esports continues to rise on live streaming sites, and with more and more influencers joining the fray, the future looks full of possibilities.
Also read:
- New Twitch millionaires — the most followed streamers in 2023
- Most Watched Mobile Games on Twitch in 2023
- Most watched publishers on Twitch in 2023
- Most watched Twitch esports clips of 2023
- Most Watched Latin American Streamers of 2023
- Most Watched News Channels 2023
- Top 2023 Awards Shows in Live Streaming
- Top German streamers in 2023 — Twitch, YouTube have most presence
- Top Huya, DouYu streams and streamers in 2023
