StreamElements released its State of the Stream August 2020 report today and the main trends its research identified included the rise of party games and an increase in hours watched on Facebook Gaming and Twitch.

Following the closure of Mixer toward the end of July, both Twitch and Facebook saw an increase in month-over-month and year-over-year hours watched for August, according to data by Arsenal.gg, StreamElements’ analytics partner.

For Twitch, the rise to 1.47 billion hours watched in August was the platform’s first month-over-month improvement since April when a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and VALORANT’s beta led to record level viewership on Twitch.

On Facebook, viewership growth has come after the platform partnered with Mixer during its closure to encourage content creators to move to Facebook Gaming after Mixer officially closed its doors.

Facebook’s 346 million hours watched in August is up slightly from 345 million in July. But year-over-year, the increase is significantly more impressive.

This August, Facebook’s viewership is up 179 percent, up from 124 million hours watched August 2019. Twitch’s hours watched total also saw year-over-year growth of 57 percent, up from 1.5 billion in August 2019.

Growth for streaming this past month has come in the form of increased hours watched for “party games” like Mediatonic’s obstacle racing game Fall Guys and the social deduction game Among Us.

“These easy-to-learn and fun-to-watch games let creators play with their fans which is a great way to engage an audience,” StreamElements CEO Dorin Nir said. “It’s the influencers and not the games that have been driving the success of these titles, as illustrated by 2018’s Among Us skyrocketing up the charts simply because some top streamers decided to play an older game. While this movement will most likely lead to new party games, it’s a great opportunity for brands to look at their catalogs to see if an older game might fit in with the current trend and be worth reinvesting in.”

While Just Chatting stayed at the top of Twitch with 166 million hours watched for August, Fall Guys’ first month on Twitch had 106 million hours watched, making it the third most-watched content on Twitch.

Though most of the growth that Among Us has seen came in September, its initial growth to 30 million hours watched in August was a 650-percent jump from July where the game only saw four million hours watched.

The game almost doubled its August viewership halfway through September, according to StreamElements, as top influencers like xQc, Pokimane, and Ninja continue to play it.

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