YouTube Gaming is gaining ground on Twitch, growing at a faster rate than the market leader in game streaming. Other game streaming platforms grew in the last year but not at the same pace as the top two services.
Twitch continues to be the dominant force in video game streaming.
Streaming Growth
A report from Streamlabs, which makes tools used by streamers to collect donations made to their channels, shows that YouTube Gaming is starting to be used by more gamers to stream. Throughout 2017, YouTube's active streamer base grew by 343 percent, during the same time Twitch grew 197 percent.
Twitch has a commanding lead over all the other streaming platforms. In the fourth quarter of 2017, it had 27,000 concurrent streamers, or number of streams going at one time. That's almost four times of YouTube's concurrent streamers which was just 7,000.
In viewers Twitch is also miles ahead of the pack. Its concurrent viewers grew from 736,700 viewers to 788,000. Twitch had more concurrent viewers than all of its competitors combined. YouTube had 308,000 concurrent viewers, Periscope had 80,000, Facebook had 27,500, and Mixer had 5,000.
Other streaming services also saw growth in concurrent viewers just not as vast as the two main services. In the fourth quarter Facebook grew 62 percent, Periscope 48 percent, and Mixer 58 percent. At the same time YouTube and Twitch grew 10 percent.
Periscope has been more aggressive in its approach to attract new streamers. The service made a revision to its payout structure to make it more attractive. Its policy now allows streamers to retain all of the earnings from the sale of "Super Hearts."
Not The Whole Picture
Any growth by Periscope has to be taken with a grain of salt. Streamlabs only began tracking the Twitter service in December. All the numbers in the report aren't the full market report. Streamlabs doesn't include Facebook Live streams that are private and doesn't take into account YouTube Live, only YouTube Gaming.
One of the takeaways from the report is that all streaming platforms are growing. No matter the size, viewership and streamers have both been increasing. Streamlabs found that streaming mobile games hasn't worked so far, but it did predict the growth of non-gaming verticals such as HQ. It notes that HQ already has a concurrent viewer count of over 200,000.
Streamlabs cites the 25 percent increase year and year since 2016, predicting more growth for 2018. It also looks forward to the rise of e-sports like the new Overwatch League that had 5 million total viewers on Twitch.
