Valve is currently on the rise on Twitch: the 10-year-old shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (Steam) has more than doubled its viewer hours and is now almost on par with League of Legends. DOTA 2 (Steam) has also doubled its viewer numbers. E-sports are huge on Twitch in May 2022, only the bizarre spectacle of the trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard is bigger.
Which games were the biggest winners on Twitch in the last 7 days? There is clearly a lack of big new releases in 2022, but Twitch has nevertheless increased by 6% compared to the previous week (via sullygnome):
- Counter-Strike Global Offensive (Steam, by Valve) has gained 128% in viewer hours compared to the previous week. This corresponds to 23.5 million more hours watched. It is now the second biggest game on Twitch.
- The MOBA Dota 2 (Steam, also Valve) is up by 111%.
- Even LoL is a big winner, with +14%: LoL is thus, as almost always, in 1st place among games on Twitch.
E-sports dominate the streaming service Twitch in 2022, but where did it all begin?
E-sports titles dominate Twitch in May 2022
Why are the 3 titles winning? All three games are established e-sports titles, which are currently experiencing a strong moment. After many months of COVID, during which only online tournaments were played, viewers are now returning to live events everywhere and the atmosphere is back:
- The PGL Major Antwerp 2022 tournament started on May 9 for CS:GO: the winner receives $500,000 in prize money.
- A major tournament is also taking place in Stockholm for DOTA 2 since May 12: the ESL One Stockholm Dota Major: the winner takes home $200,000.
- For LoL, viewer numbers are rising due to the big MSI tournament in Busan. It began on May 10 and the winner receives at least $75,000. Viewer numbers for LoL are also increasing because Tyler1 is pulling off escapades in South Korea.
Brazilian Gaules is by far the biggest streamer on Twitch
These are the big winners among the channels: In e-sports titles, the channels of the organizers benefit the most, i.e. PGL for CS:GO, ESL_DOTA 2 for DOTA 2, and Riot Games for LoL.
However, individual streamers also benefit greatly from the e-sports frenzy: Brazilian Gaules has had the largest channel on Twitch in the last 7 days, with 13.7 million viewer hours, which is double that of xQc.
The Brazilian is known for never turning off his stream, with recordings running at night.
People apparently love watching a streamer as he watches e-sports players play: At peak times, over 624,000 concurrent viewers watched Gaules on May 16.
People love watching Gaules follow the CS:GO tournament:
Those who don’t watch e-sports are engrossed in the big trial with MMORPG streamer
What else is big? Although e-sports are so big on Twitch – Just Chatting is even bigger. Here, the focus is largely on the trial between Amber Heard and Johnny Depp.
At the forefront is the MMORPG specialist and WoW expert Asmongold: The man with expressive eyebrows proves to be a gifted entertainer. People love watching him as he observes the lawyers during the trial.
WoW junkie Asmongold is currently engrossed in endless hours of courtroom proceedings:
One can see from the developments on Twitch that AAA gaming has been in a crisis for a while, and few big successful games have been released that stay relevant on Twitch for long.
This leads to two things:
- on one hand, “evergreen” and e-sports titles dominate Twitch with their events
- on the other hand, gaming streamers and their audiences are turning to other topics that are not necessarily related to gaming
After whirlpools and cooking shows, the latest Twitch meta is a court trial between 2 superstars
