Twitch came into existence in 2011, although it was originally an extension of Justin.tv, a general streaming platform that started in 2007 . The original platform was a major venture with a golden move, and its founder focused on the video broadcast named Justin Kan . However, the platform has attracted viewers who want to watch other types of content as well.
This led to the launch of Twitch , the streaming platform focused on the video games we know and love today . In August 2014, Justin.tv was shut down and Twitch was sold to Amazon in a $970 million deal .
Today, the platform is the world's most popular video game streaming platform. According to NewZoo's data, the total hours users spent watching content on Twitch in the last quarter of 2019 was an incredible 2.3 billion!
In the chart below, you can see the total viewership statistics for Twitch , Microsoft's Mixer platform, and Google's YouTube games for 2018 and 2019.
Riot Games ' Valorant failed to enter this list before Minecraft . This is because the game was only released in June 2020, even though the limited-access beta started on April 7, 2020.
In July, the game recorded more than 48 million viewer hours with an average of 66,000 viewers. It also peaked at 138,000, with about 438 live channels on Valorant at the given time. All the evidence points to Valorant on its way to becoming the next big game, so the stats should keep improving as time goes on.
Activision's COD: Modern Warfare with a total viewership of over 76 million .
The game recorded a handsome peak viewership of over 356,000 viewers, with an average of 103k viewers despite a total of 483 live channels.
Rockstar Games ' GTA 5 has maintained incredibly healthy viewing stats. The game only had an average of 419 live channels during the month of July, but users spent more than 89 million hours watching their games and related content. Fortnite, which ranked second on this list, had only six hundred thousand extra hours.
It also managed an average viewership of over 121k and recorded a peak viewership of over 373k. In comparison, Fortnite received nearly 300k peak views with over 650 live channels at any given time.
In comparison, League of Legends lasted more than 170 million hours and only had 519 live channels. Regardless, Fortnite maintained an average of more than 122k and recorded nearly 300,000 viewers at its peak.
Recently, Riot Games' LOL game has proven to be the most popular game on Twitch . In July 2020, viewers spent a total of more than 128 million hours watching content related to this game. Additionally, the game recorded an average of 175k viewers at any one time, and recorded an average of 519 live channels this month. According to TwitchMetrics , the game has been registering an average of 200,000 viewers since May 2020.