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Cyberpunk 2077 & World of Warcraft helped Twitch round out a record month of viewing

The December and 2020 year-end State of the Stream from StreamElements and Arsenal.gg showed quite a few milestones for Twitch and Facebook thanks to new releases.

TJ Denzer

January 11, 2021 9:16 AM

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With the end of 2020 having come and gone, many people settled in to watch Twitch and Facebook Gaming over the winter break. So much so that both platforms apparently had milestone months of total hours watched. According to the year-end and December 2020 State of the Stream report from StreamElements and its analytics partner Arsenal.gg, this was due in part to interest in Cyberpunk 2077 and World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.

StreamElements released its latest State of the Stream report with data from Arsenal.gg on January 11, 2021. For once, neither Among Us or Fall Guys appeared on Twitch’s top 10 most watched games of December, despite having both held high spots at multiple points throughout 2020. This didn’t stop either game from capturing some of the highest peaks in watch time throughout the year. However, it was Cyberpunk 2077 and World of Warcraft that showed up big time in December 2020, with Cyberpunk 2077 drawing 53 million hours of view time, despite issues, and World of Warcraft’s new Shadowlands expansion boosting it to 76 million in the month.

These new releases among the other regularly viewed games and categories of Twitch made for a record month of viewership totaling 17 billion total hours watched in December 2020. It wasn’t just Twitch either. Facebook Gaming also garnered a record month of viewing traffic with a 338 million hours viewed - not nearly as much as Twitch, but still showing massive growth from its reported hours back in January 2020, totaling just under 200 million. With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to act as a deterrent to get togethers, it could be argued that its continuing through the holidays was pinnacle to keeping folks in doors and continuing to watch their favorite streamers.

As we continue into 2021 with a new year, it will be interesting to see if these absolutely massive peaks of stream viewing hold out. Stay tuned for more news and information from Shacknews, StreamElements, and Arsenal.gg.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.