2020 was the biggest year for YouTube Gaming, confirms company

The year 2020 has been big for gaming and nothing proves that better than the stats shared by YouTube Gaming. As a headliner it announces that 2020 has been its biggest year with 100 billion watch time hours and more than 40 million active gaming channels.

Though before we do get into the stats we feel that we should mention that these number are this significant since people were confined to their homes because of the Covid pandemic that took over the world. In short it has been a bleak year and entertainment is the only thing that kept it afloat.

YouTube Gaming 2020 and its stats

The blog from YouTube Gaming states that more than 80,000 YouTube Gaming creators hit 100,000 subscribers. Over 1,000 gaming creators hit 5 million subscribers and over 350 gaming creators reached a 10 million subscribers. These are big numbers. But we don't have the competitor scale yet since Twitch which is the biggest platform for game streaming has not shared its stats for the year yet.

YouTube writes that it now has over 40 million active gaming channels and, globally, there were over 100 billion hours of gaming content watched on YouTube which is comparable to traveling to Neptune and back 475,000 times.

And while these are global numbers some Indian streamers made it big this year like MortaL, Dynamo Gaming and Sc0ut. Though they occupy the second, third and the fourth position respectively after NOBRU from Brazil who leads at number 1. Though sadly none of our Indian streamers made it to the list of the 'Top creators by gaming views in 2020' list.

One list that might surprise people is the live games that were most watched in 2020 which is led by Minecraft followed by Garena Free Fire, Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto V and then PUBG Mobile. And in terms of overall games watched, Minecraft leads again with 201 billion views, followed by Roblox with 75 billion views, Garena Free Fire with 72 billion views, Grand Theft Auto V with 70 billion views and Fortnite with 67 billion views.

Fortnite event 'Fortnite and Travis Scott Present: Astronomical' drew the biggest crowds for an event and Call of Duty League 2020 Championship Weekend Day 1 drew biggest crowds for an esports event.

Besides these there are other topics like 'Most-viewed videos' and 'Most-liked videos' which are also mentioned in the blog.

But it remains to be seen how much YouTube Gaming has grown compared to its competitors like Twitch and Facebook Gaming.