The third annual Game Awards, which celebrate the year’s best artistic, technical, and video gameplay achievements, saw a sizable uptick in viewership — increasing 65% year-over-year, according to the organization.
The show — which streamed on a slew of platforms including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, Steam, IGN, GameSpot, NicoNico in Japan, Tencent in China, and Next VR — delivered 3.8 million streams this year during its two-and-a-half-hour broadcast, up from 2.3 million in 2015. In 2014, the first-ever Game Awards were streamed 1.9 million times.
The Game Awards’ distribution in China in partnership with Tencent was largely responsible for this growth, accounting for nearly 1 million additional viewers. Stateside, #TheGameAwards remained the no. 1 worldwide Twitter trend throughout the entire broadcast, and use of the hashtag was up 50% year-over-year, generating 5.2 million Tweets. On Snapchat, The Game Awards’ Live Story was seen by over 5 million unique users worldwide. Finally, while VOD clips in the 24 hours after the Awards’ initial airing were seen over 15 million times on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, live playback of the broadcast generated another 4 million views.
This year’s show featured appearances from Michael Phelps, a who’s-who of prominent gaming creators, and performances from hip hop duos Run The Jewels and Rae Sremmurd. Hideo Kojima, the brains behind the Metal Gear military video game series, as well as graphic adventure titles Snatcher and Policenauts who recently parted ways with video game publisher Konami, received the Industry Icon Award, much to the delight of may high-profile people in gaming.
You can check out the full 4K broadcast of the Awards on YouTube below:
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