The Game Awards’ 2020 show hit a new global record, with more than 83 million livestreams, an 84 percent increase from last year’s 45.2 million livestreams.
The Awards aired across more than 40 digital video networks, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook Live, GameSpot, IGN, TikTok Live and Steam. Worldwide, the program aired on more than a dozen networks in China, six networks in India and some in Japan, Russia, South East Asia, South Korea and Brazil.
Fans were able to engage with the Awards through six Instagram augmented reality experiences around Game of the Year nominees, which they could share across Stories and Reels. Giving fans more ways to interact was the Game Festival, a digital consumer event that showcased over a dozen new gameplay demos to fans, distributed via Steam on PC, Xbox console and Nvidia’s GeForce Now.
In addition, 9,000 creators co-streamed the show on Twitch, where live viewership reached over 2.63 million viewers, more than double last year.
On YouTube, live viewership more than doubled, with the official livestream seeing an 84 percent year-over-year increase in peak concurrent viewers.
Conversations about the program were up 31 percent on Twitter YoY, while unique authors were up 65 percent—making it the most-talked about Game Awards to date. The show also trended number one worldwide on Twitter, with 12 of the 29 worldwide trends being about the show. Additionally, a Branded Like helped the show see usage of #TheGameAwards surge 107 percent YoY.
According to Stream Hatchet, live hours watched grew over 129 percent across Twitch, YouTube and Facebook Gaming.
Fans not only tuned in—they also made their voices heard when it came to voting. The show saw 18.3 million authenticated votes across the Game Awards’ website and on Bilibili in China for a 20 percent increase YoY in total fan votes.
All this to say that the video game industry is thriving as the pandemic persists. According to the NPD Group, consumers spent $11.2 billion on video games in Q3, a 24 percent increase YoY. During that same period, video game sales reached $10.04 billion, with significant gains observed in mobile and subscription spending, full-game downloads for consoles and portables and video game accessories.
