While people might think of Reels or TokToks (or even Vine) when it comes to short-form content, live-streaming has a much closer connection to a different type of short-form content: YouTube Shorts, launched as a beta in India in September 2020 before rolling out globally in 2021. Gaming was one of the first communities to seize on the format, and the relationship between Shorts and gaming content has only deepened since. By 2025, Shorts had crossed 200B daily views, more than doubling from 70B just a year prior, cementing it as one of the most powerful content discovery engines out there.
For YouTube Gaming, the rise of Shorts has been rocket fuel. The platform hit a new all-time live-streaming record of 8.8B hours watched in 2025, continuing to chip away at Twitch’s long-held market dominance. In this article, we’ll break down what YouTube Gaming’s 2025 numbers look like, how the Shorts boom is driving creator growth across the platform, and which games/regions are participating most in YouTubeโs community.
To discover more about the YouTube Gaming landscape in 2025 and the implications heading into the future, check out our full report now:
TL;DR Takeaways by Stream Hatchet:
- Around 1-in-4 hours watched on live-streaming platforms are spent on YouTube Gaming channels
- 67.2M gaming-related YouTube Shorts were posted in 2025, with a high of 6.1M Shorts in August
- The biggest game on the platform? As of 2025, itโs Roblox with 425M hours watched after Grow a Gardenโs success in 2025
YouTube Gaming’s Record-Breaking 2025 In The Live Streaming Arena
YouTube Gaming closed out 2025 with 8.8B hours watched, a new platform record and a +12% increase YoY. To put that in perspective, the platform has quadrupled its viewership since 2018, when it was pulling in just 2.2B hours. The growth hasn’t been a perfectly smooth ride, with market share dipping from 21% in 2020 down to 14% in both 2021 and 2022, which tracks with the post-pandemic normalization that hit pretty much every streaming platform. But since 2023, YouTube Gaming has been on a serious tear, climbing from 17% to 23% to 24% of the total live-streaming market over just three years.
With roughly 1-in-4 hours watched on live-streaming gaming platforms now happening on YouTube Gaming, the platform has well and truly moved past “Twitch alternative” status. What makes this growth particularly interesting is that it’s not coming at the expense of a shrinking market. The total hours watched across all platforms has been growing too, meaning YouTube Gaming is pulling entirely new viewers into live streaming.
YouTube Shorts: More Gaming Content Means More Discovery
The number of gaming-related Shorts posted on YouTube nearly doubled in under a year, climbing from 3.1M in November 2024 to a peak of 6.15M in August 2025. QoQ growth was strong throughout the year: +48% in Q1, +20% in Q2, and essentially flat in Q3 before a modest -11% pullback in Q4. That dip is worth keeping in perspective though: Even at 5.3M posts in December, creators are still putting out vastly more gaming Shorts than they were a year ago, suggesting there’s still a general growing appetite for the format.
It’s not hard to see why creators are pouring into Shorts. Gaming is the #3 niche on the platform by total views, accounting for around 13% of all Shorts viewership across the entire format. That’s an enormous top-of-funnel to tap into, and smart creators are using it as a launchpad for their broader channels. Canadian streamer outwork and US-based CaylusBlox are great examples: By combining Shorts with live streaming, posting Minecraft and Roblox content respectively, they earned a combined 14M new followers in 2025 alone.
Roblox Leads YouTube Gamingโs Core Content
Roblox ruled YouTube Gaming in 2025, racking up 425M hours watched and a staggering +294% YoY increase to finish as the most-watched game on the platform. That kind of growth is a result of Roblox‘s young, mobile-heavy audience: Exactly the demographic that lives on Shorts, and the game’s endlessly creative, clip-friendly gameplay makes it a natural fit for the format. Minecraft tells a similar story: 279M hours watched and +91% YoY growth, the second-highest rate in the top 10. These are games that suit both live-streaming for creativity sessions and short, punchy content for one-off random occurrences and highlights.
9 of the Top 10 games on YouTube Gaming grew their viewership YoY in 2025, which says a lot about the platform’s momentum across the board. The list itself is a pretty accurate portrait of YouTube Gaming’s strengths: Four mobile-first titles (Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Garena Free Fire, Battlegrounds Mobile India, and Roblox) reflect the platform’s dominance in Southeast Asian and Latin American markets, while heavy esports titles like League of Legends (421M hours, +19%), Counter-Strike (342M hours, +30%), and VALORANT (221M hours, +25%) show that competitive gaming has a serious home here too. Roblox, League of Legends, and Counter-Strike were among the most popular games across all live-streaming platforms in 2025, underscoring just how well YouTube Gaming’s top 10 maps to broader industry trends.
Asia Dominates YouTube Gaming’s Global Viewership, With Japan Leading the Charge
One important note on our geographical data: These figures reflect hours watched generated by the Top 1000 creators on YouTube Gaming where country data is available, rather than total platform viewership by country. With that context in mind, the geographic picture that emerges is still pretty revealing. Japan’s creators in the Top 1000 generated a massive 451M hours watched in 2025, comfortably ahead of the US at 307M. A big driver of Japan’s dominance is the country’s thriving VTuber scene, with virtual creators like those from hololive and NIJISANJI commanding enormous, deeply loyal audiences.
The broader Asian story is just as compelling: 6 of the Top 10 countries are in Asia, and fun fact: India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand combined for 472M hours watched, edging out Japan’s total. Brazil is the standout outside of Asia and the US, pulling 192M hours and firmly establishing South America as a key YouTube Gaming market. The presence of Bulgaria at 50M is a fun surprise, sneaking into the top 10 as the sole Eastern European representative. For game publishers and brands trying to reach global audiences, this data makes a strong case for YouTube Gaming as the platform of choice for gaming communities across Asia, South America, and well beyond the Western streaming markets.
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YouTube Gaming’s 2025 numbers tell a clear story: This is a platform that has found its stride. The record 8.8B hours watched, the explosion of gaming YouTube Shorts, and the breadth of the Top 10 games all point to a platform that’s firing on multiple cylinders at once. What’s particularly compelling is how these elements reinforce each other. Shorts drive discovery, discovery drives live-streaming viewership, and live-streaming viewership drives the kind of deep community engagement that allows games like Roblox to post triple-digit YoY growth.
For anyone trying to understand where gaming audiences are spending their time and what content is moving the needle, you have to understand YouTube Gaming. To discover more about the YouTube Gaming landscape in 2025 and the implications heading into the future, check out our full report now:
