From January to November 2024, the most popular gaming category on Twitch was Grand Theft Auto 5 with approximately 1.3 billion hours of content watched worldwide. Just Chatting was ranked first — the general conversation category accumulated more than 2.8 billion hours of global watch time worldwide.

Twitch is an online video streaming service which allows eSports and gaming fans to watch their favorite gamers play various online video games. In January 2025, the most popular game on Twitch was Escape from Tarkov with 132 thousand average concurrent weekly viewers.

Analysis of ‘Top games on Twitch 2016 - 2021’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/rankirsh/evolution-of-top-games-on-twitch on 28 January 2022.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

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Context

There's a story behind every dataset and here's your opportunity to share yours.

Content

In this dataset you can find the top 200 games on twitch on each month from 2016 to present day. The data is divided into two datasets: - A bigger file - Twitch_game_data in which we find 200 obeservations per month representing the top games or categories on twitch for that month.
- A smaller file - Twitch_global_data in which there is one obeservation per month that contains the general statistics about viewership on twitch.

Acknowledgements

All information was taken from sullygnome.com - a twitch analytics and statistics site.

Inspiration

Where does your favorite game stands in relation to the top game category on twich? Is there one game who is the true king of twitch? Just chatting, is this category just a fad or is it here to stay?

Suggestions and/or comments are welcomed :)

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

This statistic illustrates the distribution of Twitch users in the United States. As of December 2024, * percent of 18 - 19 year old consumers do so in the U.S. This is according to exclusive results from the Consumer Insights Global survey which shows that ** percent of 20 - 29 year old customers also fall into this category.Statista Consumer Insights offer you all results of our exclusive Statista surveys, based on more than ********* interviews.

When it comes to distribution of Twitch users in the United States, 37 percent of female consumers fall into this category in the U.S.Statista Consumer Insights offer you all results of our exclusive Statista surveys, based on more than 2,000,000 interviews.

As of February 2024, the Korean Twitch channel with the highest average viewership was Aine with around 11,918 average concurrent viewers. Twitch shut down its service in South Korea on February 27th in 2024 due to high operating costs caused by South Korea's network rules that increased costs for all video streaming platforms. Streaming via streaming platforms is common even among professional e-sports gamers and has become a popular form of irregular income for players.

Who watches online streams?

Twitch, well-known for its video game streams, had a large potential audience base in South Korea, where almost three out of four people play video games themselves. According to a survey in 2021, South Korean gamers spent up to three hours watching others players game via streams. While gamers had a higher interest in watching other people's gaming streams than, there are also streams of other categories to appeal to the sizeable Twitch community.

Popular content to stream

Aside from live streams of content creators on platforms such as Twitch or AfreecaTV, movie and TV streaming services were the most paid-for streaming content by South Koreans monthly. Accordingly, internet video viewership was high. While most people did not prefer any genre of online video in particular, domestic video content was widespread across all platforms.

Video content on Twitch is increasingly diversifying, proving that live streaming is not a format popular only among gamers. In 2021, Just Chatting was the most popular content category watched live on Twitch. This particular content type, which includes unstructured interactions between streamers and viewers, as well as a high level of audience participation, has amassed around *** billion hours watched by users on the platform. Music content was also popular on Twitch, with users worldwide watching almost *** million hours of live streaming music content in the examined period.

Counter-Strike was the most streamed game on Twitch in Polish over the past 30 days as of February 5, 2025. Created for vlogging rather than gaming content, videos in the Just Chatting category were streamed for just approximately ** thousand hours.

First founded in 2011, the live streaming video platform, Twitch, is one of the most popular ways in which viewers watch their favorite gamers play a variety of online video games. The most followed game on Twitch is Fortnite, with more than 82 million followers across the platform as of June 2023.

Felix "xQc" Lengyel is one of the most-followed streamers on Twitch. The Canadian gamer reported 12 million followers in October 2024. Felix Lengyel rose to fame by playing Overwatch competitively, and until May 2022, his handle was "xQcOW," with the OW being a reference to Overwatch. However, the rename of his handle suggests a shift to a more generalist streaming approach, as many of Lengyel's streams are under the Just Chatting category.

Twitch streaming in Poland has grown significantly, with top creators amassing millions of channel views. Izakooo leads the pack with an impressive 190 million views, nearly doubling the viewership of the second-place streamer, nervarien, who garnered 85.4 million views. This stark difference highlights the competitive nature of the Polish streaming landscape and the potential for standout performers to capture a large audience share. The power of game-specific content Game-specific content is a driving force behind viewer engagement in Poland. League of Legends streamers, in particular, have found success, with h2p_gucio averaging over 6,000 viewers in July 2024. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive also maintains a strong following, as evidenced by izakooo's peak viewership of nearly 22,000 in January 2024. These numbers suggest that Polish audiences have a strong preference for competitive gaming content. Diverse streaming landscape While gaming dominates the Polish Twitch scene, there's a growing interest in non-gaming content as well. The "Just Chatting" category has gained traction, with approximately 34,000 hours streamed over a 30-day period. This trend indicates a diversification of content on the platform. Women were becoming increasingly popular among streamers. One of the most popular female streamers in Poland was kasix, whose streams in July 2024 were viewed for more than 139 hours.

American online streamer and vtuber Hasan Piker, better known by his Twitch channel's name HasanAbi was reported to have engaged Twitch users for approximately ************* hours in July 2024. The political science graduate created his Twitch channel in 2018, starting to live stream in the category "Just Chatting" and quickly becoming one of the most popular streamers creating political content on the platform.

Dota 2 was the most popular game on Twitch in Russian over the past 30 days as of December 10, 2024, with a combined around 577,000 hours of the online battle game streamed. Created for vlogging rather than gaming content, videos in the Just Chatting category were streamed for over 417,000 hours.

In November 2024,the Just Chatting streaming category, which increased in popularity among all non-gaming live streamed content types, saw around ** million hours watched among global Kick viewers. Live streaming content involving slot and casino gaming was the second most watched category on live streaming platform Kick. This type of live streamed content - which is usually restricted on YouTube Gaming and Twitch - generated over ** million hours watched among global audiences for the month.

Despite being a hub for gamers and being known for hosting the most popular gaming streamers, Twitch has become increasingly popular for non-gaming content. In December 2022, the creative channel BobRoss - which streams all the episodes of the ***** program "The Joy of Painting" hosted by legendary artists Bob Ross - was the leading art content channel on the platform, with viewers watching *** thousand hours of content during the month. Viewers of second ranked Dyarikku watched *** thousand hours of content watched from his channel. Art videos and live streams on Twitch were the fifth most watched non-gaming category in 2021.

Between April to June 2021, the months during which the hot tub streaming trend on Twitch peaked in popularity, Amouranth was the most popular streamer in the category, with 2.41 million hours watched. The trend led the video game streaming platform to provide a new category titled 'Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches'.

Garena Free Fire is a battle royale game first released in September 2017. The online-only action-adventure game pits up to 50 players against each other on an island in a fight to the death. In July 2025, Stheffanifr1 was the top-ranked Garena Free Fire streamer, having accumulated approximately 56,591 viewer hours on Twitch in the preceding 30 days.

The streams of izakooo in Poland was watched for a total of 403.36 hours in February 2025. Users youngmulti and neexcsgo were next, with 198.43 and 163.28 thousand hours of stream watched, respectively.    Who are Polish live streamers?     The Polish live stream scene is dominated by men, with women constituting about 14 percent of the country’s streamers. Kasix, navcia, and claudien_ figure among the most-watched female live streamers in Poland. In terms of content, League of Legends and Fortnite – among other game titles – are the most chosen stream categories. Twitch – home to Polish live streamers     Twitch is the undisputed leader and the most popular live-streaming platform among Polish streamers, followed by YouTube. As a result, the platform is also appealing to live stream fans. As of March 2022, Izakooo (Piotr Skowyrski) was the Polish-speaking Twitch streamer with the highest number of channel views. Over the past few months, the number of downloads of the live gaming streaming app Twitch fluctuated, peaking at approximately 100 thousand in May 2023. 

The inaugural Esports World Cup, scheduled to take place in Saudi Arabia in July and August 2024, was due to feature 20 events across 19 video game titles. The South American Closed Qualifier for the Esports World Cup reached a peak viewership of over 54 thousand fans.