Across the top 100 games being streamed in May, viewership grew by 3.5%: A rise of just 50M hours watched compared to April. Rust dropped out of the top 10 despite a recently successful Twitch Drops campaign, while Street Fighter 6 rose up to 13th place thanks to continued coverage by VTubers and a community-bonding Twitch Plays Akuma campaign.
One of the surprise comebacks this past month was Diablo 4, which managed to increase its viewership by just over 500% from 1.8M hours watched in April to 11M hours watched in May. This resurgence was thanks to a clever combination of promotions and new content. From the 18th of April to the 2nd of May, Diablo 4 went on sale on Steam for half its usual price, bulking up the Action-RPG’s player base. Then, on the 14th of May, Season 4’s Loot Reborn update reworked the game’s plethora of useless equipment to make grinding more worthwhile.
Meanwhile, the best-performing new release of the month came on the 23rd of May with Wuthering Waves, the so-called “Genshin Killer” anticipated to become the new most popular gacha game. Wuthering Waves settled into #32 on the leaderboard with 10.5M hours watched, while Genshin Impact dropped 26% down to just 7.4M hours watched as streamers flocked to the new title.
New First-Person Shooters Disrupt the Most Popular Gaming Genre on Live Streaming
Over the past 12 months, First-Person Shooters have been the most popular gaming genre on Twitch, making up 13.4% of all Twitch viewership. For the past few months, the only new Shooter title to break through and compete with mainstays like the Call of Duty franchise and VALORANT has been Helldivers 2. But many popular Shooters dropped in viewership for May, with Helldivers 2 and Escape from Tarkov dropping by 33% and 68%, respectively. Other Shooters like Counter-Strike, Call of Duty: Warzone, and PUBG all lost viewership as well.
The reason for the drop most likely comes down to two newly-released Shooter titles that upset the balance: Arena Breakout: Infinite and XDefiant. Arena Breakout: Infinite developer MoreFun Studios hosted a series of Twitch Drops campaigns in which access keys were handed out for the game’s ongoing closed beta. Shooter fans were desperate to get their hands on these keys, generating 16.4M hours watched in May. Towards the end of the month, Ubisoft’s multiverse arcade-style shooter XDefiant was released to cautious onlookers. But thanks to a fast-paced gameplay style that set it apart from the competition, XDefiant brought in 10.4M hours watched despite only having released on the 21st of May.
Community Events are Crucial to Raising the Profiles of Older Games
A number of Twitch-specific events helped a couple of classic games rise back up to the top of the leaderboard for May. Minecraft celebrated its 15th anniversary throughout the month, with giveaways and special community challenges designed to bring together players from different eras of the game’s popularity. As a result, Minecraft content generated 76.8M hours watched – enough to propel it to the #5 spot for May. Meanwhile, Kai Cenat’s marathon Elden Ring stream drew in more hardcore gaming fans with over 100 hours of gameplay. This marathon stream was a major boon to Elden Ring’s viewership, helping boost it to 32M hours watched for May.
Events occurred off of Twitch as well, such as the niche racing game Trackmania seeing a phenomenal spike in viewership all from the release of just one new map titled Deep Dip 2. Pro players on multiple live-streaming platforms turned out to try and complete the ultra-difficult tower-style map, with their fans flocking in droves to watch the competition. As a result, Trackmania viewership jumped almost 650% up to 10.1M hours watched.
Of course, these are just a few of the highlights from May. Here are the top 20 games, and their rank changes from April:
| Game | Rank | Hours Watched May | Hours Watched Apr | %Change | Rank Change |
| Grand Theft Auto V | 1 | 176,053,549 | 160,855,701 | 9.4% | 0 |
| League of Legends | 2 | 159,929,239 | 139,729,961 | 14.5% | 0 |
| VALORANT | 3 | 98,800,515 | 108,771,323 | -9.2% | 0 |
| Minecraft | 4 | 76,824,324 | 28,177,666 | 172.6% | ▲ 9 |
| Counter-Strike | 5 | 67,747,098 | 82,799,589 | -18.2% | ▼ 1 |
| Dota 2 | 6 | 57,406,313 | 59,009,120 | -2.7% | ▼ 1 |
| Fortnite | 7 | 51,997,148 | 57,092,514 | -8.9% | ▼ 1 |
| Apex Legends | 8 | 39,476,429 | 29,675,345 | 33.0% | ▲ 3 |
| Call of Duty: Warzone | 9 | 39,049,496 | 48,147,452 | -18.9% | ▼ 2 |
| Mobile Legends: Bang Bang | 10 | 32,352,708 | 34,823,321 | -7.1% | 0 |
| Elden Ring | 11 | 31,923,743 | 11,295,626 | 182.6% | ▲ 19 |
| Street Fighter 6 | 12 | 27,892,072 | 12,606,161 | 121.3% | ▲ 16 |
| World of Warcraft | 13 | 26,852,722 | 22,084,894 | 21.6% | ▲ 5 |
| Garena Free Fire | 14 | 26,384,137 | 41,180,443 | -35.9% | ▼ 6 |
| Rust | 15 | 26,224,250 | 36,071,269 | -27.3% | ▼ 6 |
| EA Sports FC 24 | 16 | 24,372,804 | 26,336,669 | -7.5% | ▼ 1 |
| PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS | 17 | 22,188,361 | 25,233,024 | -12.1% | ▼ 1 |
| Dead by Daylight | 18 | 22,102,221 | 19,792,397 | 11.7% | ▲ 2 |
| Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege | 19 | 20,421,568 | 26,921,724 | -24.1% | ▼ 5 |
| Overwatch 2 | 20 | 17,605,039 | 23,963,053 | -26.5% | ▼ 3 |
