2021 is rapidly coming to a close, with just seven days remaining until New Year's Eve. It's been a year of ups and downs for many subsections of the gaming industry, but one area that's only seen growth is streaming. Twitch isn't the only streaming platform to seem massive growth, but it remains the far and away industry leader. And at the top of Twitch remains a single streamer, claiming the position for a second straight year. That Twitch streamer is, of course, xQc.
According to a report from Stream Elements, xQc is 2021's top streamer in terms of total hours watched by viewers throughout the year. xQc accrued an astonishing 261 million hours of watch time from his Twitch viewership. That's over 100 million more hours than xQc had in 2020, when he was also the most-watched streamer on Twitch. It would be appropriate to say that xQc's total number of watched hours in 2021 is unlikely anything seen before on streaming platforms.
Streamer xQc's success is unique, too. That's not to say that other Twitch streamers weren't incredibly successful, but xQc is on an entirely different level. The next most popular Twitch streamer is Brazilian favorite loud_coringa, who managed over 180 million hours. In third, 2020's second-place finisher Gaules climbed above xQc's total last year. There's somewhat of a drop-off after Gaules, with MontanaBlack88, auronplay, HasanAbi, shroud, NICKMERCS, summit1g, and loltyler1 rounding out the top 10 with between 100 and 125 million hours watched.
Stream Elements also reported on the top woman Twitch streamer of 2021, which is Amouranth. Amouranth pulled in 45 million hours of viewership and ultimately placed 33 on the list. The only other woman to make the top 100 Twitch streamers is saddummy, revealing that Twitch yet has an issue with platforming women streamers and bringing in women viewership.
One thing that didn't change dramatically in 2021 is which games on Twitch pulled in the most viewership. The top ten games watched on Twitch for 2021 are Grand Theft Auto V, which includes Grand Theft Auto Online streams, and then League of Legends, Fortnite, Valorant, Minecraft, Call of Duty: Warzone, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Apex Legends, and Dota 2. The highest new IP on the list was New World, which placed 18th.
xQc's success, as well as the success of so many other Twitch streamers, has been largely due to the growth of Twitch itself -- though Twitch owes everything to its streamers, as well. Twitch has grown 45% year-to-year in terms of total hours watched. It's up to 24 billion hours of viewership in 2021. For comparison, Facebook Gaming climbed to 5.4 billion hours in 2021. Now to see if xQc and Twitch can continue the trend in 2022.