A new set of figures on Twitch viewership this past year shows a lot of what you’d probably expect: Fortnite and League of Legends are vying for the top spot, and Apex Legends is the newcomer to beat. But one game on the top ten list jumps out: Grand Theft Auto V was Twitch’s fourth most-watched game in 2019, with nearly three times the viewers this year as it had in 2018.
As our sister site The Loadout reports, GTA V was watched for 523 million hours over the course of the past year, an increase of about 277% over the year before, according to new Twitch viewership data published by StreamElements and Arsenal.gg. That puts it in fourth place overall, behind League of Legends, Fortnite, and the ‘Just Chatting’ category.
GTA V was more popular on Twitch in 2019 than Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, World of Warcraft, and Apex Legends. People watched more GTA V this past year than the number of hours viewers watched of Overwatch and Hearthstone combined.
As The Loadout points out, GTA V has seen a bit of a renaissance this year thanks to the popularity of roleplay modes and servers, which have been showcased by big-name streamers like Saqib ‘Lirik’ Zahid and Jaryd ‘Summit1g’ Lazar.
According to figures from Sullygnome, GTA V saw a peak viewer count of 304,053 viewers – not all that impressive compared to the million plus peaks seen in League of Legends, Fortnite, and Dota 2. But those viewers seem to tend to stick around and watch a lot of GTA, propelling the game up into Twitch’s top five for the year.
Some other notable figures from the Stream Elements report include Fortnite’s 28% decline over last year, and World of Warcraft’s 55% growth – probably owing much to the launch of World of Warcraft Classic earlier this year.
Check out our list of the best GTA V mods to learn more about RP modes like LSPD First Response.