Concurrent viewers of livestreams by platform.
Categories

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was the most streamed game in Q3 2017

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was the No. 1 game for livestreams in the third quarter, with more than 3.8 million hours streamed on Twitch alone.

That’s one of the facts in a new report on livestreaming from company Streamlabs, which has a platform that allows streamers to collect tips from their viewers. The San Francisco company keeps tabs on streaming, and it has stats that show which platforms are the biggest when it comes to active streamers. Streamlabs said League of Legends dropped to No. 2 in the quarter, with a total of 2.5 million hours of gameplay streamed.

Twitch is on top when it comes to concurrent streamers by platform.

The data show that Twitch grew 67 percent in concurrent streamers, or the number of people streaming at once, from 15,000 in the second quarter to 25,000 in the third quarter. By contrast, YouTube declined 12 percent from 9,300 in the second quarter to 8,200 in the third quarter. This only includes data for YouTube Gaming Live, not YouTube Live overall. As for Facebook Live, the data only includes public, open broadcasts. The majority of live broadcasts on Facebook are to friends only or are privacy restricted and hence not open to everyone.

But YouTube outpaced Twitch during the quarter in terms of monthly active streamers. YouTube grew 56 percent in the quarter while Twitch grew 16 percent in terms of streamers using the Streamlabs tipping platform. During the quarter, Streamlabs processed 2 million tips.

Meanwhile, Periscope saw an 80 percent rise in concurrent viewers.

During the third quarter, Streamlabs itself grew by 20 percent in streamers, with YouTube growing 56 percent in streamers using the Streamlabs platform. Streamlabs estimates it will process more than $100 million in tips donated to streamers this year, more than double compared to what was processed in 2015.

According to a recent report from SuperData Research, 563 million people watch YouTube’s gaming content whereas 212 million viewers use Twitch. That means that Twitch’s audience has a larger percentage of streamers — particularly some with small audiences — compared to YouTube’s audience.

Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.