Report: Riot Games rises, Fortnite and Twitch slow down [StreamLabs]

Analytics firm Newzoo has once again partnered with Streamlabs to compile a quarterly report with relevant information about the state of game streaming in Q2 2019. The data is full of interesting tidbits about what gamers like to watch and play on services like Twitch, YouTube Gaming, and Mixer. 

There are two pieces of information that especially stand out: Twitch growth has leveled out, while Riot Games has overtaken Fortnite maker Epic as the most-watched publisher on Twitch.

Twitch is still by far the most-watched and used gaming streaming service, with nearly 95 million hours streamed and 2.7 billion hours watched between April and June of this year. That’s a lot of time, but according to Streamlabs, “People watched 55 million fewer hours of content on the platform, a 2% decrease from last quarter.” Hours streamed also dropped 10%.

Twitch’s most-watched games are Fortnite, Riot Games’ League of Legends, and the six-year-old Grand Theft Auto V. While Epic Games’ Fortnite came out on top for individual games, the release of Riot’s Teamfight Tactics gave the publisher a second game in the top ten andboosted the publisher ahead of Epic overall.

YouTube Live is still far behind Twitch, but it hit some milestones this quarter with “all-time highs for hours watched, streamed, average CCV, and viewers per channel.” That boosted YouTube to 701.6 million hours watched and 13.2 million hours played in Q2. Microsoft’s Mixer is a distant third with 119.1 million hours watched and 12 million hours streamed.

Streamlabs’ report also included stats for DLive, a relatively new streaming platform that leverages blockchain technology. Thanks to its use by popular streaming personality PewDiePie, DLive has managed to make an impression: 34.2M hours of content watched, 3.2M hours streamed, and a 67% increase in monthly average users.

While much of the quarterly report doesn’t come as a surprise, the subtle shifts in numbers could foretell bigger changes ahead. Twitch is still far too dominant to be overtaken by YouTube or any other platform in the immediate future, but it’ll be worth keeping an eye on these numbers to see if the pattern of decline continues. It’s also interesting that gamers prefer established titles over flashy new ones — the newest game in Twitch’s top three is Fortnite, which gained its popular Battle Royale mode in 2017. With 42% of U.S. gamers playing Battle Royale titles on the regular, it’s no surprise that these kinds of games continue to dominate.