2020 is YouTube Gaming’s biggest year, ever: 100B watch time hours

We now have over 40 million active gaming channels and, globally, there were over 100 billion hours of gaming content watched on YouTube. (That’s like traveling to Neptune and back 475,000 times.) And live streaming on YouTube had an incredible year: We saw watch time from video game live streams grow to over 10 billion hours. Creators like LazarBeam, Lyna, MortaL, CouRage, TheDonato and Typical Gamer are streaming exclusively on YouTube, and we’ve seen Valkyrae grow to become one of the biggest female live streamers across all platforms since she started streaming exclusively on YouTube.

As the year comes to an end, we’re reflecting on the moments, creators and trends that defined gaming on YouTube in 2020. We came together for good, as creators like Rooster Teeth, TheDonato and CoryxKenshin used their voices and channels to benefit COVID-19 relief efforts and more. This year, we also hosted five YouTube Gaming charity tournaments in Mexico, the United States and Europe to benefit COVID-19 relief efforts.

And while we couldn’t get together in person, we were still able to share communal experiences virtually. We met digitally for in-game concerts like Travis Scott’s in Fortnite; major announcements for the year’s newest consoles; and YouTube became the key destination for major esports tournaments around the world, such as the Call of Duty League, Valorant First Strike, Arena of Valor International Championship, ESL’s Counter-Strike Pro League, Overwatch League, League of Legends Worlds, Free Fire League Championship, and many more!

And you’ve done it all on YouTube. As the year comes to an end, let’s take a look back at the games, creators, moments and trends that brought us together even closer on YouTube.