Five games grabbed 61% of Twitch views in Q4 2014

The range of games streamed on Twitch is certainly diverse, but five big hitters were very much in control of the video streaming service last year.

EEDAR data published on Games Industry shows that five games – League of Legends (26%), Dota 2 (12%), Hearthstone (9%), Counter Strike (9%) and World of Warcraft (5%) claimed a 61 per cent share of Twitch views in Q4 2014.

While Twitch is becoming a more diverse content channel, the top multiplayer games that have strong eSports communities and operate as an ongoing game as a service (GaaS) drive a large percentage of the overall traffic,” the report said.

Interestingly, while League of Legends has almost double the share of Twitch view volume as Dota 2, Dota 2 over-indexes compared to the overall size of the respective games, as League of Legends has approximately seven times the monthly active users as Dota 2 (70m compared to 10m).

This is likely driven by Twitch being a primarily Western Market product and by Dota 2 having a higher percentage of users that are interested in competitive play (League of Legends is considered the more accessible of the two games).”

However, venture beyond the Top Five and the genres being streamed becomes more varied.

Minecraft (4%) was the sixth most viewed while Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2%), FIFA 15 (2%), The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (1%), DayZ (1%), Runescape (1%) and Ultra Stret Fighter IV (1%) all feature in the Top 20.

The report also found that game launches, competitive tournaments or coverage by video personalities are all perfectly capable of temporarily elevating a title to the higher reaches of charts, while the success of one given title in a particular genre can directly dent the numbers won by genre rivals.