Stream Hatchet has released its analysis of 2022, revealing into the state of streaming for the previous year.
Highlights? Well, there was a notable decline in hours viewed on all three major streaming platforms: Twitch (5.4 billion hours viewed, down 6 percent year-on-year), YouTube (1.1 billion hours viewed, down 9 percent year-on-year), and Facebook Gaming (2.1 billion, down 56 percent year-on-year.)
Notably, both Facebook Gaming and Twitch saw declines in every quarter, while YouTube Gaming saw a increase in only one quarter, Q3, where viewership rose four percent to 1.2 billion.
As previously noted by Stream Hatchet, YouTube is responsible for the majority of mobile gaming content on streaming platforms, accounting for 47 percent in October. This indicates that mobile streaming may have helped bolster these figures, helping YouTube avoid steeper decline, despite Twitch’s significantly higher market share.
Only two mobile exclusive games are listed as among the most viewed of the year: Arena of Valor and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, which accounted for 5.5 and 17.2 percent of hours viewed in the MOBA genre, respectively. However, cross-platform games such as Apex Legends, Minecraft, and Genshin Impact also saw significant viewership in the FPS and Action Adventure genres, respectively.
Mobile market share
This result is echoed in the top ten games of the year as a whole, with Apex Legends and Minecraft occupying the fourth and fifth spots, while Fortnite sits at number seven. Only one mobile exclusive title, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, made it into the top ten games of the year, reaching number nine with a cumulative 572.8 million hours of content viewed. Interestingly, this is the only game which has no data on Twitch streaming, emphasising once again that this platform tends to be less popular with mobile streamers.
The top ten games also highlights the relative strength of various platforms. Notably, two games have fallen off the board: Garena Free Fire and PUBG Mobile, both of which saw a significant portion of their viewership come from Facebook Gaming. Stream Hatchet notes that “their fall from the top 10 seems to coincide with the decline of the platform itself.”
Despite this decline, Facebook Gaming saw a significant increase in in the proportion of female streamers, rising 4.8 percent to 12.2 percent of the top 1000 channels. YouTube (13.6 percent, +5.3 percent) and Twitch (11.6 percent, +0.3 percent). Interestingly, the platforms with the largest increases have historically proven to be strong draws for mobile streamers, and as previously noted mobile remains the dominant way to play for female gamers.
No mobile events were listed as among the top esports events of the year, however mobile esports generated over 350 million hours of viewtime. 80 percent of those hours came from YouTube Gaming, highlighting once again the strength of this platform in terms of mobile gaming.
While mobile gaming may have struggled to place in terms of events, esports content in general saw one mobile game, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, among the top five, with a total of 165 million hours viewed.
In August, it was announced that Meta was closing the Facebook Gaming app.
