Asmongold and non-gaming content are reportedly dominating Twitch

A lot has changed in the world of streaming content in the last year following Tyler “Ninja” Blevins’ move to Mixer and older games like Minecraft rejoining to the top titles being watched on Twitch. 

And as the third quarter of 2019 comes to a close, WoW Classic streamer Asmongold has firmly secured the top spot on Twitch for hours watched and non-gaming content is growing rapidly on the website, according to a report by StreamElements.

September was the second month in a row in which Asmongold dominated the charts following the release of World of Warcraft Classic since he was already a well-known personality in the Warcraft community. He barely beat out Turner “Tfue” Tenney in August when he first broke into the top five channels, but he absolutely crushed the ratings in September, pulling in 13 million viewers even during a slow month for the platform. 

Since he almost exclusively plays WoW on stream, the recent controversy between Blizzard and Hong Kong might affect just how well he does moving forward for the rest of the year. It hasn’t appeared to significantly hurt his average viewership, which was already slowly declining after peaking in August. But that could still change in the future. 

It really depends on what his streaming strategy moving forward will be, considering he streamed the Fortnite black hole event and nearly reached 70,000 viewers compared to 40,000 when he played WoW earlier in the day.

The end of Fortnite season X was also an abnormal trend for the game since it had been declining in overall viewership since the start of the year. That also meant many Fortnite streamers moved on to other games, which saw the number of hours streamed for the battle royale drop from 30 million hours in Q1 to around 15 million in Q3. 

But after “The End” event yesterday had four million people watching the game live, whatever happens with Fortnite Chapter Two will likely revitalize the game—at least for a little while. 

And as games like Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto V slowly declined, the Just Chatting section on Twitch continued to rise, becoming the only category to show an increase in each quarter of the year. Since launching in 2018, it’s grown nearly 36 percent, outpacing the growth of Twitch as a whole. 

“While viewership of every top game has fluctuated, Just Chatting is the only category to consistently maintain its upward momentum,” StreamElements CEO Doron Nir said. “It grew 36 percent since its launch a year ago which is four times as much as Twitch’s overall growth rate in that period. This is significant because it shows where Twitch is heading and opens the door to more non-endemic brands given that influencers who use the category are more conversational and provide more opportunities not tethered to gameplay.”

Over the last year, Just Chatting has grown to reach 189 million hours watched per quarter by Q3 2019. It’ll likely break the 200 million mark by the end of the year if it continues at its current growth rate of 4.72 percent. It has consistently been the fourth-ranked category on the website, sitting just under League of Legends throughout the year. 

With other titles like WoW and Dota 2 spiking in viewership—WoW due to the release of WoW Classic and Dota because of The International 2019—there are several games that look like they might be staying in the top 10. 

Both WoW and Minecraft saw astronomical increases in viewership, with each game jumping more than 100 percent in Q3 alone. WoW went from 89 million hours watched to almost 200 million, while Minecraft jumped from 32 million to just over 75 million. 

Those numbers will likely stabilize through Q4, but outside of Pokémon Sword and Shield dominating the platform or FIFA 20 somehow managing to break in, it looks like this will be the top 10 to finish out the year based on averages. 

• Fortnite
• League of Legends
• WoW
• Just Chatting
• GTA V
• Dota 2
• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
• Overwatch
• Minecraft
• PUBG

Another older or seemingly niche game could catch fire, though, and take the streaming world by storm. If the rest of the year is anything to go by, keep your eyes on nostalgic titles with consistent player bases.