The top games in live-streaming by hours watched leaderboard saw a bit of a shakeup in December 2023.
Grand Theft Auto V saw a 63% increase in hours watched from 127 million in November to over 207 million in December. This jump was highly influenced by the leak and then release of the official trailer for GTA VI, which sent the gaming community into a frenzy.
GTA V was released over 10 years ago in 2013 and fan desire for a new game in the series from Rockstar has been steadily increasing. The action-adventure/racing game gained extensive popularity in the last few years from the rise of role-playing servers. In 2019, Twitch streamers playing on these RP servers, particularly the NoPixel server, boosted interest and pushed the trend.
GTA VI, which is set to launch in 2025, will bring a whole new level of interest and excitement to an already extremely popular game among players and live-streaming viewers. It will be interesting to see what kind of growth will occur.
League of Legends was the top game in November, but dropped several places to #3 for December. Viewership dropped about 31% from the prior month.
While Fortnite dropped about 11% in hours watched in December, it still generated 135 million hours watched and came in at the 2nd most-watched game in streaming. The newest update of Chapter 5, Season 1 was launched at the beginning of the month, including 3 new game modes: Lego Fortnite, Fortnite Festival, and Rocket Racing. The Fortnite Winter Festival at the end of the month also generated interest, alongside a Twitch Drops campaign that helped boost viewership at the end of the month.
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang saw a huge increase in hours watched of 167% in December, from 24.4 million to over 65 million hours watched. This increase was boosted mostly by the M5 World Championship which concluded in the middle of the month and generated the bulk of the viewership.
Here is the full list of the top 20 games in live-streaming in December:
| Rank | Game | Hours Watched Dec | Hours Watched Nov | %Change |
| 1 | Grand Theft Auto V | 207,441,425 | 127,424,675 | 62.8% |
| 2 | Fortnite | 134,553,255 | 150,928,865 | -10.8% |
| 3 | League of Legends | 117,644,241 | 172,225,765 | -31.7% |
| 4 | Mobile Legends: Bang Bang | 65,319,530 | 24,435,535 | 167.3% |
| 5 | VALORANT | 58,800,586 | 78,474,012 | -25.1% |
| 6 | Minecraft | 58,035,474 | 58,494,741 | -0.8% |
| 7 | World of Warcraft | 51,696,042 | 84,666,370 | -38.9% |
| 8 | Call of Duty: Warzone | 49,650,903 | 13,105,138 | 278.9% |
| 9 | Counter-Strike | 40,881,977 | 46,847,410 | -12.7% |
| 10 | Dota 2 | 40,583,779 | 39,488,090 | 2.8% |
| 11 | Lethal Company | 33,476,016 | 19,581,133 | 71.0% |
| 12 | Rust | 32,618,522 | 9,327,964 | 249.7% |
| 13 | Escape From Tarkov | 31,731,196 | 15,424,943 | 105.7% |
| 14 | Teamfight Tactics | 29,822,378 | 28,592,027 | 4.3% |
| 15 | EA Sports FC 24 | 29,666,797 | 34,322,811 | -13.6% |
| 16 | PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS | 27,545,827 | 30,083,529 | -8.4% |
| 17 | Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III | 26,543,682 | 49,380,398 | -46.2% |
| 18 | Apex Legends | 24,702,081 | 32,582,307 | -24.2% |
| 19 | Path of Exile | 23,398,954 | 2,887,985 | 710.2% |
| 20 | Garena Free Fire | 23,276,680 | 29,141,919 | -20.1% |
