To say that Twitch is becoming an phenomenon of sorts, would be a massive understatement, and the staggering numbers from 2018 show just how far streaming has come in terms of widespread popularity.
According to a report from StreamElements (h/t VentureBeat), Twitch streams saw a growth in viewership of over 25% compared to 2017, which is an additional 506 million hours of viewership.
Twitch wasn’t the only streaming platform to see an uptick, YouTube Live was up 104% from 2017, clocking an additional 414.5 million hours in 2018.
So what’s hauling in the major traffic for Twitch?
Fortnite. The mega-popular battle royale ranked as the most watched game on Twitch, with around one billion hours last year, 373 million more hours than the 2nd most viewed game on Twitch, League of Legends.
And while those numbers are impressive, the report points out that Fortnite’s numbers are slowly declining, as 2018 Q4 showed a 15% drop in hours viewed from it’s peak in 2018 Q2.
Here are some of the numbers: