In 2021, what were people watching on Twitch? Apparently, there aren’t a lot of completely new games. Grand Theft Auto V was, in fact, the most popular game on Twitch this year in terms of hours viewed.
According to Rainmaker.gg and StreamElements’ State of the Stream 2021 year in review report, GTA V was watched for a total of 2.1 billion hours in 2021. That’s 1.3 billion more hours than the previous year, when it was only 764 million.
GTA V GTA Online : The Contract Trailer
It may seem odd that an eight-year-old game is still at the top of the Twitch charts, but that’s because Twitch doesn’t distinguish between Grand Theft Auto 5 and Grand Theft Auto Online, the latter’s extremely long tail and a seemingly endless source of content for the streaming giant and its users. League of Legends, Fortnite, and Valorant are some of the other games that have a strong following in the conversation.
New World, Amazon’s popular MMORPG, came in at #18 in the study as the most-watched new IP. A healthy dosage of mobile games, such as Call of Duty: Mobile and PUBG MOBILE, are also charting strong numbers.
Grand Theft Auto Online continues to be a phenomenon even outside of Twitch, with regular updates. That doesn’t stop fans from wondering when the next installment in the series will be released. Not that producer Rockstar can’t make a mistake with the franchise, as the botched GTA Trilogy release compelled it to provide a free game as an olive branch to disgruntled players.
Grand Theft Auto 5 is currently available for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Xbox One X/S, and PC. For the same systems, Grand Theft Auto Online is also available.