Twitch’s 2024 gaming data shows us why ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ will be such a big deal

2024 was an innovative year in the video game industry. Marvel Rivals put a twist on the hero shooter genre, top streamers discovered soulslike games such as Elden Ring, and cult favorites like Balatro gave indie titles a seat at the table.

Despite all that variety, Twitch streamers are spending more time with old favorites than new releases. According to a raft of data released by the Amazon-owned hub, the most popular game on Twitch in 2024 was Grand Theft Auto V, the 11-year-old open-world sandbox that continues to thrill gamers with multitudinous modes of play

Thanks to companies like StreamElements and Streams Charts, statistics about the relative popularity of specific games among streamers are commonplace. The latest data dump, however, is a rare first-party look at Twitch’s numbers. The platform’s 2024 figures are staggering, if not surprising. The Twitch community delivered 15.6 billion hours of global watch time in its gaming categories in 2024. In comparison, Kick recently set a new high water mark with 317 million hours of monthly watch time. (Twitch’s 2024 sum averages out to about 1.3 billion hours of watch time per month.)

New types of streaming contributed to that growth. Twitch noted that VTubers collected 1.1 billion hours of yearly watch time in 2024; virtual creators in the U.K. saw their traffic increase three times over.

But all of the top five titles on Twitch in 2024 were time-honored classics. GTAV led the way with 1.4 billion hours of annual watch time, League of Legends contributed nearly 1.2 billion hours, Valorant topped out at 804 million hours, Fortnite came in at 539 million, and Call of Duty rounded out the top five at 451 million.

The gap between GTA V and Fortnite is a telltale sign regarding the future of sandbox games. Fortnite and Roblox are currently top choices for creators who want to launch games-within-a-game, but GTA developer Rockstar is primed to shift the balance of power when it releases the next chapter in its flagship franchise later this year. GTA VI will cater to the creative crowd that populates the worlds of Fortnite and Roblox. The series’ massive Twitch audience will help Rockstar pull off its plan once GTA VI (finally) hits the shelves.