Twitch still blithely crushes Facebook Gaming and YouTube Gaming but declines a bit

 

The latest report from Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet has come out and confirms Twitch's dominance over other video game streaming services.

However, this third quarter of 2021 has some surprises in store, notably with the advance of Facebook Gaming.

Twitch is still dominant but with declining results

Like every quarter, Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet released their report on video game streaming platforms. This latest report analyzes the figures for the third quarter of 2021, from July to September. As expected, Twitch remains the most used platform by streamers and viewers, with 5.79 billion hours watched for this third quarter and 222.9 million hours streamed.

However, these good results still represent a decline for Twitch. At the start of the various confinements around the world, the popularity of the platform had exploded. It had managed to retain most of the users throughout 2021, but as of this quarter, the trend begins to reverse. Compared to the second quarter of 2021, the number of hours watched on the platform fell by 11%. The drop is also present on the side of the streamers themselves, with the number of hours streamed which saw a decrease of 8.3%, and the number of unique channels decreased by 9.6% compared to the last quarter.

Despite these declines, Twitch continues to largely dominate its competitors. It represents 70% of the market share for the hours watched and 89.7% of the market share for the hours streamed.

The other surprise of this report is the rise of Facebook Gaming, which for the first time overtakes YouTube Gaming in the number of hours watched, with 1.29 billion hours watched against 1.13 billion for YouTube Gaming. The report explains this rise of the platform partly because of its popularity with non-English speaking audiences but also by its constant improvements... A co-streaming feature was added recently, allowing creators to stream together while letting viewers choose which stream they wish to watch. They have also extended their protections for creators wishing to use copyrighted music, an initiative sorely lacking by its competitors.

YouTube Gaming, for its part, continues to be a platform of choice for eSports but lacks large individual streamers. However, the platform continues to improve on this site and will introduce the possibility of offering subscriptions and functionality similar to Twitch Prime. She also signed exclusive contracts with two streamers, DrLupo and TimTheTatman, in a bid to compete with Twitch.