Users of YouTube Gaming Watched 100 Billion Hours of Gaming Content in 2020

YouTube Gaming head Ryan Wyatt has revealed that users of the video-sharing site watched 100 billion hours of gaming content on the platform this past year, double the number of hours watched in 2018.

In a breakdown of the 100 billion figures, 10 billion of those hours were of YouTube Gaming live streams, a strong sign the Google-owned site is shaping up to be an even more formidable competitor to Amazon-owned Twitch.

According to the company, the global top overall games watched in 2020 were:

• Minecraft: 201B views
• Roblox: 75B views
• Garena Free Fire: 72B views
• Grand Theft Auto V: 70B views
• Fortnite: 67B views

Also, the top 5 live games watched in 2020 were:

• Minecraft
• Garena Free Fire
• Fortnite
• Grand Theft Auto V
• PUBG Mobile

YouTube says it now has more than 40 million active gaming channels, and that 80,000 channels hit 100,000 subscribers this past year. More than 1,000 channels broke 5 million subscribers in 2020, while more than 350 channels hit 10 million subscribers.

A YouTube’s blog post reads, “We now have over 40 million active gaming channels and, globally, there were over 100 billion hours of gaming content watched on YouTube. (That’s like traveling to Neptune and back 475,000 times.) And live streaming on YouTube had an incredible year: We saw watch time from video game live streams grow to over 10 billion hours. Creators like LazarBeam, Lyna, MortaL, CouRage, TheDonato, and Typical Gamer are streaming exclusively on YouTube, and we’ve seen Valkyrae grow to become one of the biggest female live streamers across all platforms since she started streaming exclusively on YouTube.

“Creators across the board have seen massive increases in subscribers, audiences, and viewership throughout 2020. One incredible example of growth in 2020 is Minecraft content creator Dream, who saw channel subscriptions surge from 1 million in January 2020 to over 13 million by October the same year. The channel’s speedrunning series drew in tens of millions of views each.”

The surge in gaming content in 2020 can be attributed to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which has sent online entertainment stats through the roof for activities like streaming TV and multiplayer gaming.