Nearly 500,000 People Are Livestreaming on Twitch Every Day

Livestreaming platform Twitch will end 2018 with more than 456,000 partner and affiliate streamers able to generate revenue, up over 86 percent from some 245,000 at the end of 2017. Twitch said over 248,000 streamers earned affiliate status in 2018 and more than 7,800 became partners. The video-game-centric platform added that nearly 500,000 streamers go live every day, and its streamers per month topped 3 million this year, up from 2 million at the end of last year. Twitch said that at any given time, an average of over 1 million people are watching videos via its platform, with overall minutes watched at 434 billion year-to-date. An all-time record for highest concurrent viewership on an individual’s channel was set this year by Ninja, who established the mark in March when he was joined by hip-hop star Drake on a Fortnite stream, only to beat his own record in April, when more than 667,000 concurrent viewers took in his livestream at the opening of the Las Vegas Esports Arena. The record for most concurrent viewers on a single organization’s channel was also set this pat year, with over 1 million for the ELeague’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Grand Final match. The Electronic Entertainment Expo in June established the mark for highest concurrent viewership across all of Twitch, with over 2.9 people tuning in. Over $40 million was raised for charity by the Twitch community in 2018, bringing the total since the launch of the brand in 2011 to more than $130 million. Twitch users interact on the platform’s chat function via emotes, and Kappa, the face of irony and sarcasm, which had been the top emote since 2011, was unseated this past year by LUL, used to express laughter. Third place went to an emote that helps users show amazement, PogChamp. The platform has some 400 active extensions, with nearly 4,000 in development, and users interacted with those extensions 4.9 billion times in 2018, with Streamlabs proving to be the most popular one. The top 10 new game releases in 2018, according to minutes watched via Twitch, were: Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Monster Hunter World Sea of Thieves FIFA 19 Red Dead Redemption 2 God of War Realm Royale Dragon Ball Fighterz Far Cry 5 Detroit: Become Human “Speedrunning” is an attempt to play through a video game as quickly as possible, and in 2018, speedrunning records were set on Twitch for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (by Zfg1), Super Mario Bros. (by somewes), Mega Man 11 (by Qttsix) and Celeste (by TGH_sr). Twitch revealed its end-of-year retrospective as an interactive video game in 2016 and a comic book in 2017. The 2018 edition was presented as a special edition of Twitch Weekly Friday. Twitch chief marketing officer Kate Jhaveri said in a release featuring all of the 2018 data above, “We love celebrating the community and their achievements. It's their dedication and passion that have made for a record-setting year on Twitch. Our role is to support everyone who helps create the live, interactive and shared entertainment that makes Twitch so unique, and we'll keep that focus in 2019 with more tools, opportunities and experiences to ensure the community continues to thrive."