The Ten Biggest Games For Twitch, YouTube And Facebook Streamers In 2022

If you’re a game streamer who wants to connect with the biggest audience possible, you don’t need to be an esports contender–you can just rely on an old faithful.

 

It may be celebrating its tenth anniversary this September, but Grand Theft Auto V is still the most popular game among game stream viewers in 2022, according to a new report.

 

The Video Game Streaming Trends 2022 Yearly Report from Stream Hatchet, which dropped this week, revealed that GTA V maintains its grip on live game streaming, above a raft of titles associated with the highest tiers of competitive esports.

It’s a position that GTA V has held in Stream Hatchet’s rankings since Q4 2020; in 2022, it racked up a whopping 1.82 billion hours of watched gameplay across Twitch, YouTube Gaming, and Facebook Gaming. 

However, its dominance over its rivals is waning. League of Legends placed second with 1.77 billion hours viewed, just 50 million hours less than Rockstar’s iconic title–reducing GTA V’s dominance by nearly 650 million views, year on year. 

League’s esports stablemates Valorant and Apex Legends also had a strong showing in 2022, climbing the leaderboard to third and fourth places respectively, from seventh and ninth in 2021. Valorant was the only game in the top 10 to see an increase in hours watched (22% growth), which Stream Hatchet attributes to its “robust esports scene.” 

Notable games dropping out of the top ten entirely include Garena Free Fire–the third-most watched game in 2021 with 1.23 billion hours–and PUBG Mobile which placed sixth last year (1.09 billion views). A huge portion of both games’ viewership traditionally comes from Facebook Gaming, which has experienced a 54% drop in overall viewership in the last 12 months; Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is the only game with a majority Facebook audience to survive in the top ten in 2022.