The streaming service Streamlabs has released its quarterly look at the state of the video game live streaming world and, by its counts, streamer interest in YouTube Gaming is on the rise.
Checking out data from companies like Streamlabs is one of the many ways game developers can keep an eye on changes and trends in the growing world of live streaming, though of course no one report should be considered the be-all-end-all of stream analytics.
By Streamlabs’ count, YouTube Gaming saw a 343 percent increase in monthly active streamers in 2017, while Twitch saw an increase of 197 percent. For streamers and viewers alike, Twitch still represents the biggest live streaming platform with a total of 814,000 quarterly active streamers during Q4 2017.
YouTube Gaming ended the quarter in second place with 293,000 quarterly active streamers, followed by Facebook with 27,500 and Mixer with 15,800.
Quarter to quarter, Twitch increased its unique active streamers by roughly 76,000 between Q3 and Q4 2017. During that same period, YouTube Gaming jumped roughly 25,000 unique active streamers.
Though both major streaming platforms saw a rise in active streamers in Q4, YouTube Gaming notably lags behind Twitch in terms of concurrent streamers. YouTube Gaming saw only 7,000 concurrent streamers during its peak in Q4 2017, a 1,200 decrease from the 8,200 peak reported for Q3.
Twitch meanwhile hosted 27,000 concurrent streamers at its Q4 peak, up from the 25,000 reported during Q3. Mixer and Facebook both notably saw little fluctuation during that same period.
The full report along with graphs detailing the information from this quarter’s breakdown can be found on Medium.