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The Game Awards 2018 live viewership doubles to 26 million

The Game Awads 2018's live viewership doubled, with impressive numbers for the latest gaming-centric award show.

Brittany Vincent

December 12, 2018 10:15 AM

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The Game Awards 2018 doubled its viewership this year, with an audience that grew to over 26 million livestreams.

This year's presentation of The Game Awards had a massive number of viewers, as it attracted an audience that was up 128% from 2017's performance, which attracted 11.5 million livestreams.

The show aired live from the Microsoft Theater on Thursday, December 6, and showed growth in all aspects, including social engagement, voting, and co-streaming. In fact, this iteration of The Game Awards became one of Twitch's biggest livestreams ever, peaking at 1.13 million concurrent viewers, doubling last year's numbers in its entirety. Peak concurrency for the show is at an estimated 4 million viewers, which is double than the number on YouTube compared to 2017.

“Five years in, it’s amazing to see The Game Awards continue to grow both domestically and internationally,” said creator and producer Geoff Keighley. “These results further validate our focus on an all-digital, no-friction approach of sharing this show globally across more than 45 video platforms, not to mention the growing interest and passion for video games around the world.”

Here are the livestream numbers for The Game Awards to date since its inception:

• 2018: 26.2 Million (Up 128%)
• 2017: 11.5 Million (Up 202%)
• 2016: 3.8 Million (Up 65%)
• 2015: 2.3 Million (Up 23%)
• 2014: 1.9 Million

Frustratingly, however, The Game Awards was a long, sluggish march toward the end for many viewers, and featured some pretty awkward performances. Seriously, the stream is about 4 hours, including the pre-show, and it's just not very interesting to watch the award show drag on that long. Luckily, we put together plenty of coverage during the show that you can read instead, as well as a complete list of winners so you can see who won all the big honors.

Brittany Vincent

Senior Editor

Fueled by horror, rainbow-sugar-pixel-rushes, and video games, Brittany is a Senior Editor at Shacknews who thrives on surrealism and ultraviolence. Follow her on Twitter @MolotovCupcake and check out her portfolio for more. Like a fabulous shooter once said, get psyched!