State of the Stream for Jan 2024: Twitch has 5 months of daily growth, Palworld makes a stellar debut
Welcome to the State of the Stream, where we share the latest streaming data around platforms, content creators, and related trends. The following report features narratives crafted by StreamElements based on data courtesy of our friends at Rainmaker.gg.
Twitch kicks off 2024 with a strong start
Twitch started the new year with 1.902B monthly hours watched in January 2024, which is a 6% increase compared to December 2023’s 1.790B. More notable are the five consecutive months of growth in daily hours watched. Both the daily and monthly hours watched were peak months compared to the previous three quarters.
StreamElements co-founder Or Perry had this to say about the latest uptick:
“It’s promising to see Twitch achieving a new peak with five consecutive months of growth in daily hours watched. However, it is too soon to know if the broader gaming audience is finally embracing the platform, as January always attracts more viewers than December. With more creators embracing multi-streaming, such as Pokimane going platform-agnostic, it is only a matter of time before the positive impact of pulling in more viewers from different apps is felt on Twitch.”
Palworld takes Twitch by storm
January’s biggest success story is the launch of Palworld. The game is often described as “Pokémon with guns,” but some liken it even more to “Rust with pets,” given the survival crafting and base-building aspects.
While it is the first major debut of the year, it is #3 when compared to last year’s biggest launch weeks on Twitch (Diablo IV’s launch week had 70M hours watched, Hogwarts Legacy had 50M, and Palword 40M).
Escape from Tarkov also had an amazing month, with its hours watched increasing 180%! It went from 29M to 82M, with a lot of it being attributed to a Twitch Drops event.
fps_shaka wears the crown two months in a row
Japan’s fps_shaka has now taken the top spot on Twitch for two consecutive months! While the majority of his time (209 hours) was spent playing GTA 6, he broadened his appeal by devoting around 50 hours each to Palworld and Street Fighter 6. For comparison, he streamed 28 hours of Street Fighter 6 and 239 GTA 6 in December.
Entering the charts for the first time with a meteoric jump is variety streamer caseoh_. He went from the #20 spot with 3.9M hours watched in December to #7 with 6.5M in January. A lot of the credit is being attributed to his successful TikTok channel, where he is attracting millions of views per post.
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