Twitch and Facebook Gaming exploded during the pandemic — and they’re even bigger a year later

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today, StreamElements and its partner, analytics company Rainmaker.gg, have put out the February issue of their “State of the Stream” report. It’s something of a fascinating document because, as the end of the pandemic draws near, it’s another piece of evidence that live-streaming platforms were one of the winners of the crisis. (You know, assuming there can be winners to a global mass death event.) The biggest finding in this month’s report is that, in terms of hours watched, both Twitch and Facebook Gaming are up around 80 percent year over year. To be slightly more specific: Twitch has grown by 82 percent, while Facebook Gaming grew by 79 percent. For Twitch, that translates to more than 1.8 billion hours of watch time in February;... Continue reading…