Despite the shortened month, both Twitch and Facebook Gaming continued to see impressive year-over-year growth throughout February, growing 82 percent and 79 percent in hours watched, respectively, according to data from Rainmaker.gg, StreamElements’ analytics partner.
In total, Twitch dipped from its highest total viewership of two billion hours watched in January to around 1.86 billion hours watched in February. Facebook Gaming saw a large dip too, dropping from its record peak of 439 million hours watched to back under 400 million.
Twitch’s continued growth was pushed by massive bumps to Grand Theft Auto V, VALORANT, and Apex Legends viewership.
Just Chatting remained the top category on Twitch yet again at 245 million hours watched. League of Legends reclaimed the second spot at 135 million hours, while GTAV jumped all the way to third place at 135 million, largely thanks to the launch of new GTA roleplaying servers that have brought more creators to the game.
Rust saw the biggest drop of any top title, plummeting to No. 10 after sitting in the second spot in January, going from 189 million hours watched to just over 43 million.
Chess experienced its fourth-straight month of increased viewership, setting a new record with 21 million hours watched. Most of that viewership came from GMHikaru, the official Chess channel, and others like Sardoche, Ludwig, and BotezLive.
“Although Chess got a viewership boost around the time of the October premiere of The Queen’s Gambit, it has proven to be a compelling category driven by popular streamers over the past four months,” StreamElements CEO Doron Nir said. “So much in fact that it set a new milestone in February with over 21 million hours watched compared to just one million a year ago.”
For individual channels, xQc continues his reign as the top streamer on Twitch, having pulled in another month with more than 17 million hours watched. Gaules and Trymax round out the top three spots at around 12 and 10 million hours watched each.
