PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was the No. 1 game for livestreams in the third quarter, with more than 3.8 million hours streamed on Twitch alone.
That’s one of the facts in a new report on livestreaming from company Streamlabs, which has a platform that allows streamers to collect tips from their viewers. The San Francisco company keeps tabs on streaming, and it has stats that show which platforms are the biggest when it comes to active streamers. Streamlabs said League of Legends dropped to No. 2 in the quarter, with a total of 2.5 million hours of gameplay streamed.
Above: Twitch is on top when it comes to concurrent streamers by platform.
The data show that Twitch grew 67 percent in concurrent streamers, or the number of people streaming at once, from 15,000 in the second quarter to 25,000 in the third quarter. By contrast, YouTube declined 12 percent from 9,300 in the second quarter to 8,200 in the third quarter. This only includes data for YouTube Gaming Live, not YouTube Live overall. As for Facebook Live, the data only includes public, open broadcasts. The majority of live broadcasts on Facebook are to friends only or are privacy restricted and hence not open to everyone.
But YouTube outpaced Twitch during the quarter in terms of monthly active streamers. YouTube grew 56 percent in the quarter while Twitch grew 16 percent in terms of streamers using the Streamlabs tipping platform. During the quarter, Streamlabs processed 2 million tips.
Meanwhile, Periscope saw an 80 percent rise in concurrent viewers.
During the third quarter, Streamlabs itself grew by 20 percent in streamers, with YouTube growing 56 percent in streamers using the Streamlabs platform. Streamlabs estimates it will process more than $100 million in tips donated to streamers this year, more than double compared to what was processed in 2015.
According to a recent report from SuperData Research, 563 million people watch YouTube’s gaming content whereas 212 million viewers use Twitch. That means that Twitch’s audience has a larger percentage of streamers — particularly some with small audiences — compared to YouTube’s audience.
