In December, many developers released holiday updates for their games, which attracted new players and viewers. Streams Charts explains the changes of the platform’s most popular categories by the end of December 2020.
Just Chatting category remains the undisputed leader of Twitch, reaching the mark of almost 248 million hours of watch time in December, which is only 0.35% less than in November. At the same time, the number of the peak viewers of Just Chatting has increased by more than 100 thousand.
The Spanish content creator for G2 Esports Ibai “Ibai” Llanos found himself at the very top of the category with the viewers having spent 7.35 million hours watching his streams. American streamer Hasan “hasanabi” Picker, who was the best in November, dropped to the fourth spot: aside of Ibai, he was bypassed by Felix “xQc” Lengyel and Matthew “Mizkif” Rinaudo.
Fortnite surpassed League of Legends in the battle for the second spot. Epic Games' battle royale gained an advantage due to a themed event featuring Marvel's character Galactus. December 1st marked the start of this in-game event, and it ended up gathering more than 1.5 million peak viewers, which is three times the peak audience of League of Legends.
World of Warcraft continues to gain popularity as well: the RPG has risen from the seventh to the fourth spot of the ranking. In mid-December, the game introduced the epic mode of the new “Castle of Nafria” raid, causing the viewers to closely follow the progress of the guilds; on December 23rd, Complexity Limit became the first in the world to kill the main boss.
Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most anticipated games of the year, took the seventh spot of the ranking. Despite the hype, the RPG from CD Projekt RED has failed to take the lead in terms of peak viewers, although still managed to gather 1.14 million people, staying 442 thousand peak viewers behind Fortnite.
Also Read: First week of Cyberpunk 2077 on Twitch
Cyberpunk 2077 was behind both Minecraft and Call of Duty: Warzone in terms of hours watched. The latter got a separate Twitch category in December, with both Black Ops Cold War and the Modern Warfare Remastered leaving the top 20 afterwards.
Escape from Tarkov returned to the top 10 with triumph, breaking its own peak viewers record on Twitch. On December 28, a festive event featuring distribution of in-game items was held in the game. Thanks to the integration with the streaming platform, the broadcasts gathered 419 thousand peak viewers, which is 24.3% more than the previous record, which was set back in June 2020.
In December, Among Us left the top 10 most popular categories. The multiplayer game from InnerSloth had its peak viewers and hours of watch time drop by 38%, and it seems that the Twitch Rivals competitions have failed to get viewers interested.
Also Read: Twitch Rivals Among Us: Spain Takes the Lead
FIFA 21 was yet another game to leave top 10. EA Sports’ football simulator showed growth in terms of the viewers per channel (+11%) but suffered a drop in terms of both hours of watch time (-14%) and peak viewers (-6%).
Rust has managed to double its view count as of December, with the viewers spending a total of 19.1 hours on the game’s broadcasts. The reason for this is the launch of a dedicated server for content creators, which both the streamers and their fans have been waiting for. The survival simulator attracted 330 thousand peak viewers, which is 5.5 times more than in November.
As for the most popular Rust streamer in December, that was xQc by a wide margin. His viewers spend almost 3.5 million hours watching his game’s broadcasts, which is three times more than the result of Michael “shroud” Grzesiek, who finished second. The top 5 also featured Sykkuno, hJune and Team SoloMid member Ali “Myth” Kabbani.
Top 20 no longer features Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Demon's Souls. Ubisoft’s game dropped from 16th to 69th spot, while the one made by From Software dropped from 17th to 58th spot.
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