Watching people play video games may seem like an alien concept to some individuals, but it is undoubtedly an activity that millions of us enjoy. Live streaming platforms such as Twitch have become a central hub for gamers, allowing them to showcase their talents to a global audience.
Some of the highest paid Twitch streamers earn millions of dollars for playing these games, highlighting just how lucrative online gaming has become. To determine which games were the most popular on Twitch during October 2023, we turned to leading market analyst Newzoo to provide us with answers.
The table below shows the most viewed games on Twitch across the top channels that broadcast game-related content. The rankings are determined by the total amount of hours each game has been watched by Twitch users during the month.
World Championships Fire League of Legends to the Top
Although League of Legends (LoL) is consistently one of the most viewed games on Twitch, it has also received a handy boost over the past few weeks. The ongoing League of Legends World Championship in South Korea has garnered massive global interest, resulting in a big spike in viewership.
LoL's fanbase was originally built up when Riot Games cleverly released it without a price tag but monetized it by selling in-game cosmetics.
Players were enticed into the LoL universe as it was free to enter, and word of mouth soon resulted in the game building a massive global community. Despite utilizing this seemingly freemium marketing tactic, LoL has repeatedly been one of the highest-grossing games in the world each year.
The professional level of the game is extremely lucrative—a point evidenced by the estimated $2.2 million prize pool that is on offer to the competing teams. It is a similar story to Dota 2—another game that has benefitted massively from the number of people who major eSports tournaments on Twitch.
The International 2023 was staged in Seattle during October and contributed 27.4 million viewing hours out of an overall tally of 73.3 hours over the month. Those figures were enough to put the game third on the list behind Grand Theft Auto V (102.9m hours), which did not have the luxury of any eSports events contributing to the total.
EA Sports FC Makes an Immediate Impact
A little further down the list, one of the best sports games of all time demonstrated its enduring popularity by garnering more than 48m views during October. EA FC 24 is the first installment in the EA Sports FC franchise, replacing the previously iconic FIFA series developed by Electronic Arts.
The game is guaranteed to gain even more viewers over the next few months, with EA recently confirming the structure of its brand-new eSports ecosystem. Entitled FC Pro, the framework consists of three major elements—FC Pro Open, FC Pro League, and FC Pro World Championship.
The FC Pro Open kicks off proceedings and is designed to be the most inclusive eSports feature in the history of the game, with newbies able to go head-to-head with season veterans.
The top-ranked players from ten regions across the world will eventually be brought together to compete for a $1m cumulative prize pool in London. The FC Pro Leagues serve as an invite-only competition for professional players representing football clubs from some of the best leagues in the world.
These teams are attached to clubs in competitions such as the Premier League and La Liga and will attract plenty of interest on Twitch when the leagues get underway. The competitions will serve as a feeder to the FC Pro World Championship in June 2024, which is the culmination of all the previous events.
This will feature the best 32 players from over the course of the season who will compete for a share of the $1m prize pool and the title of the very first FC Pro world champion. A total of 28 players will be selected from the FC Pro Leagues to take part in the event, with the remaining four chosen from the FC Pro Open.
All of the action will be live-streamed on Twitch and should help to fire EA FC 24 up the viewership rankings over the next few months.
