Many potential players form their first impression of a game based on its performance on live streaming. As streamers play the game, opinions spread around the content: Is it high quality? Does it live up to expectations? Does it have the breadth and depth of gameplay necessary to justify a purchase? If a game makes a splash on live streaming and catches the hearts of streamers, it gets played more and pushes more viewers into buying the game as well.
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Although no game is guaranteed success on live streaming, looking at which titles have worked in the past might give us some insight into what games will hit big on live streaming in 2025. Brands and publishers alike should be aware of what genres, budgets, and launch strategies have worked in the recent past to determine where to place their advertising dollars. Understanding trends, like those covered in Stream Hatchet’s free Save Point 2024 report, is crucial for predicting what will be popular in the coming year.
In this article, we’re looking at the top game launches on live streaming from 2023 and 2024 to glean what trends are popular with online audiences and provide a yardstick against which to measure the success of upcoming game launches in 2025.
Top Game Launches by Hours Watched
Looking at hours watched in the first 30 days of a game’s release provides perspective beyond Day 1 hype (which can be generated by marketing alone). In this respect, Diablo IV had by far the most positive initial reception with 168M hours watched in its first 30 days – 75M hours more than second-place Palworld. As the next entry in one of Blizzard’s most beloved franchises the game was expected to perform well, but a relentless advertising campaign helped to seal the deal (including hell-themed billboards that happened to coincide with the Canadian wildfires back in June of 2023). Another ARPG, Path of Exile 2, snagged third place with 92M hours watched (discussed more below).
Diablo IV also fit the bill of another trend among the top games on live streaming: Sequels. Understandably, viewers eagerly anticipate gameplay from the next entry in their favorite franchises, with games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (85.6M), EA Sports FC 25 (67.4M), and the World of Warcraft expansion The War Within (61.4M) all hitting big in their first month. The only two games in the top 10 to buck this trend were the aforementioned Palworld and Black Myth: Wukong, both from Chinese developers. However, it’s worth noting that in these cases, the games still derived much of their hype from comparisons to pre-existing IPs (Pokémon and Elden Ring respectively).
Top Game Launches Growing in Viewership After Launch
While AAA titles gauge what a successful game launch looks like on live streaming, it’s not exactly helpful for developers or publishers with original IP and tighter budgets who don’t intend on competing with the likes of Blizzard and EA. These smaller games instead hope to grow dramatically after release, using a few key streamers or opinion pieces to propel them from relative obscurity into the spotlight. For this reason, we looked at the biggest rank changes among the top 200 titles from their rank by hours watched in the first 7 days up to their rank in the first 30 days.
Looking at these games from a growth perspective, the entire line-up radically changes. Indie platformer/climber Only Up! managed to jump 178 positions into the #20 spot – a leap from 138K hours watched in its first 7 days up to 24.1M hours watched in its first 30 days.Only Up! represents a wave of games that have been extremely friendly towards streamers, in which a clear-cut challenge is presented that players can boast about accomplishing. Other games in this vein include Foddy-likes such as Chained Together and Heave Ho. Many of these games are also co-op which allows for streamers to collaborate and cross-pollinate their audiences, such as Lethal Company (jumped 137 ranks) or Pico Park 2 (jumped 85 ranks).
Unsurprisingly, almost all of these titles are indie games. Indie games rarely have the pre-release hype of a AAA title, and depend upon early adopters for visibility. Simulator games are a perfect example: A now saturated genre, rare examples like Supermarket Simulator (jumped 71 ranks) need a positive online streaming culture to stand out. Games that depend upon shock or innovation to generate word-of-mouth like psychological horror title MiSide (jumped 47 ranks) also see massive rises after their initial release. The only exceptions to this indie-only rule were Pokémon TCG Pocket (jumped 78 ranks) and Football Manager 24 (jumped 48 ranks) which were launched basically as side projects by their respective publishers but later gained acclaim.
Top Game Launches by Peak Viewership
For brands in particular, peak viewership can be a more important factor in determining where to allocate their marketing dollars. For a limited-time campaign, advertisers want to reach the largest audience possible. In this respect, Path of Exile 2 had by far the highest peak viewership in its first 30 days at 1.4M. This continues the trend discussed above, in which ARPGs seem to attract the most viewers to live streaming. ARPGs are fast-paced games with little (relevant) story, which keeps streamers constantly playing rather than wading through menus or cutscenes. Additionally, Path of Exile 2’s gameplay is incredibly complex so many players flock to live streaming to find out the optimal builds from experts in the genre. Both of these observations can be extended out to shooter games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (617K): All killer, no filler games with high skill ceilings to attract would-be pros.
Curiously, two survival titles also snuck into the top 10 here: Sons of the Forest and The Day Before with peak viewerships in their first 30 days of 909K and 645K, respectively. Unlike ARPGs and shooters, these games have long stretches of downtime in which no active conflict is happening. However, what they lack in action is made up for in tension: Viewers become increasingly invested in a streamer’s run as they escape death and accumulate resources. Additionally, both these games use horror aesthetics to their advantage: One of the most in-demand genres on live streaming as evidenced by the popularity of horror games from Resident Evil 4 to Dead by Daylight. In other words, it may be more the “horror” than the “survival” that contributed to these games’ overwhelming success.
Top Game Launches by Airtime Hours
While viewer interests are hard to pin down, it’s somewhat easier to secure streamer interest in one’s game and hope that viewer interest follows. Airtime hours in the first 30 days tend to favour big IP as streamers make a bet that viewers will tune in for heavily promoted games, like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (4.4M airtime hours) and Diablo IV (3.6M airtime hours). Perhaps the best example of this philosophy is Hogwarts Legacy: A title that was swamped with controversy, yet had the backing of the Wizarding World IP to convince streamers it would bring in viewers.
From a less cynical viewpoint, it’s possible that the bulk of streamers simply love being in these worlds and choose to drop all other games to cover them. That logic would certainly explain why so many RPGs have high first 30 day airtimes, like Hogwarts Legacy (3.2M) and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (1.7M). In fact, almost all of the top 10 games by airtime hours are single player games with long campaigns. Even for streamers jumping on the bandwagon, they most likely get engrossed in the game and feel compelled to complete it (or are coerced to complete it by their audience who have become invested).
What Lessons Can We Take From Successful Game Launches on Live Streaming?
Combining together all of these observations may provide some insight into which games will perform well on live streaming over the next couple of years. Some are quite obvious: Viewers and streamers alike will always give new entries in big franchises a shot, as seen with Call of Duty, Diablo, and The Legend of Zelda. But the success of smaller titles from big IPs like Pokémon TCG Pocket suggests that it may be worth brands betting on spin-offs. While big entries like Monster Hunter: Wilds and Grand Theft Auto VI will no doubt perform incredibly well, spin-offs like Pokémon Legends: Z-A are also worth looking at.
Games featuring one or more of the highlighted popular genres are also likely to perform well over the next year, like horror games, ARPGs, shooters, simulators, Foddy-likes, and RPGs. Take, for example, The Blood of Dawnwalker which is an RPG with horror elements developed by ex-members of CD Projekt Red (The Witcher, Cyberpunk 2077). However, brands should get in quick before the genres become too saturated and viewer interest wanes, picking games that have had longer promotional periods and have built anticipation.
Among indie games, publishers should look at selling the social and challenging elements of their games. We saw how games that allowed collaboration brought streamers together (Lethal Company), and games with a single, high-intensity challenge pitted them against one another (Only Up!). Indie games are uniquely positioned to create cooperative campaigns that AAA games rarely invest in, with games like Split Fiction (from the developers of It Takes Two) and Stage Fright (from the developers of Overcooked) coming in 2025. Games that center more on a single challenge are harder to pin down, with so many being released and only a handful going viral in the same way Only Up! did.
It remains to be seen if these trends continue into 2025, or if viewer exhaustion wins out and viewers gravitate to alternative types of games for entertainment. Additionally, key tastemakers in gaming like zackrawrr and caseoh_ will no doubt determine which games smaller streamers pick up to play. Stream Hatchet will be watching for new trends as they emerge to discover them first.
To keep up to date with the latest big games on live-streaming platforms, follow Stream Hatchet:
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