Twitch posted its most viewership ever in October with over 1.6 billion hours watched on the platform, according to StreamElements’ State of the Stream monthly report released today.
The figure is a 99-percent year-over-year improvement for Twitch from 839 million hours watched in October 2019, according to data from Arsenal.gg, StreamElements’ analytics partner.
The huge influx in viewership for Twitch has been consistent since April, shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prior to October, April 2020 was Twitch’s most-watched month with more than 1.5 billion hours watched. Along with the COVID-19 pandemic keeping people inside during that period of time, the release of VALORANT’s beta boosted viewership.
Since then, Twitch’s monthly hours watched totals have hovered around 1.5 billion until this past month.
The viewership record for Twitch comes with a handful of its regularly successful categories seeing month-over-month growth above 20 percent, including Just Chatting, League of Legends, and Minecraft.
Meanwhile, newer games like Phasmophobia and Genshin Impact played a role in viewership growth with 45 million and 29 million hours watched, respectively.
Sitting at 200 million hours watched, the Just Chatting category extended its streak of being the most-watched category on the platform. At the same time, its viewership total marked a 202-percent year-over-year growth for the category.
Though Twitch is clearly the top streaming platform among gamers, Facebook Gaming has also seen notable improvement in viewership this year. With more than 300 million hours watched, Facebook had 118-percent year-over-year growth.
Similar to the way Twitch has seen viewership skyrocket since March, Facebook Gaming has seen a huge jump as well. And while October wasn’t a record month, it was the platform’s sixth straight month with more than 300 million hours watched.
