Live streaming viewership trends never cease to amaze as the top three games with the most hours watched last week all released more than six years ago. League of Legends, Minecraft, and GTA V continue to push past all the new releases thanks to constant updates and loyal fan bases. A bunch of promising new games are scheduled to come out in 2020 which will undoubtedly move some of these older titles down the list but won’t wander too far from the top — at least until a LoL 2, GTA VI, and Minecraft 2 are released.
League of Legends kicked off their 10th season on Friday as millions of players jumped online to finish their placement matches. Millions also pulled up streams as the game generated over 26 million hours watched resulting in a 20.88% increase. With the LPL beginning their schedule on January 13th and the other leagues to follow, LoL is looking to grow their viewership even higher than last year. The LEC and LCS play their first matches on January 24th and 25th, respectively, so LoL should be able to keep their top spot throughout the first month of 2020.
Minecraft came as the biggest surprise of the top three games as it rocketed up from the sixth spot the previous week. With a 19.86% increase, it landed at just under 19.5 million hours watched. The viewership can likely be associated with the new roll out of the January maps on Realms Plus: Minecraft’s subscription service that grants access to new servers, marketplace packs, and more. Minecraft is providing consistent content to keep players engaged and coming back, something newer games may need to take note of.
Rounding out the top three is GTA V which accumulated just under 19 million hours watched with a 1.99% increase. The GTA V role-play trend has kept the game extremely healthy recently but even without that fad, it’s performing very well. Similar to Minecraft, GTA V has been releasing updates which cause an influx in content creation and viewership to maintain its relevance across the streaming sites. Another parallel to Minecraft is that they’re both open-world games which allow for different adventures each session; something that inherently creates unique content. This genre may be the key to keeping a game alive for so long without the obvious help from a thriving esports scene.
Growing Titles:
- FIFA 20 rose 141% to close in on 14 million hours watched most likely because of the TOTY winners announcement and event kickoff on January 6th.
- CS:GO grew 32.94% and landed just under 13 million hours watched but actually fell one spot to #8 in the rankings.
- Dota 2 held the Bukovel Minor which generated substantial growth of 63.55% to over 12 million hours watched.
- Garena Free Fire also hit 12 million hours watched with a growth of 30.55% — the only pure mobile game to increase on the list last week.
Declining Titles:
- Fortnite declined 7.66% to drop out of the top three with a little over 17 million hours watched.
- PUBG Mobile dipped 7.23% to 15 million hours watched but maintained their #5 spot on the list.
- Escape from Tarkov dropped 53.80% to under 15 million hours watched after raking in over 31 million hours the previous week at #1.
