TimTheTatman is known for his early stream antics in which he regularly spends a large chunk of his stream opening links donated to him by viewers. And today, he decided to dole out some wisdom to viewers who wanted him to move into gameplay.
“Guys, listen. Twitch.tv is not about games anymore,” he said. “Stop asking for gameplay. This website is not about that. Just Chatting is always number one. That’s it. The games are gone. Gone are the days of games on Twitch.”
And he has a point. In the past year, Just Chatting, which was a spinoff of the “IRL” section in the fall of 2018, was the third most-watched form of content on Twitch behind just League of Legends and Fortnite with more than 750 million hours watched, according to stats recorded by SullyGnome.
Just Chatting is one of the top categories on Twitch, but it also experienced one of the most drastic year-over-year improvements of any category on the platform. While the category wasn’t implemented until the end of September 2018, it recorded 141 million hours watched that year. Its predecessor, IRL, recorded 346 million hours watched for a total of a little more than 487 million hours watched.
So adjusting for the fact that the category was previously a part of the more encompassing IRL category, Just Chatting saw a boost in viewership of 263 million hours watched, up 54 percent from 2018.
While Tim is no slouch with more than two million hours watched in the category last year, the category only makes up a share of what he streams. His 189 hours of airtime in the category is relatively small compared to some of Just Chatting’s top streamers.
XQc led Just Chatting in viewership last year with more than 14.5 million hours watched and over 750 hours of airtime. Other notable streamers to use the category include Rajjpatel, Trainwreck, Greekgodx, Pokimane, and Sodapoppin.
