On Twitch, the world's premier video game streaming platform, non-video game videos are increasingly popular. Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, has always hosted the videos of gamers who broadcast live – and in some cases for a fee – their games and gaming sessions, as well as “esport” events, ie video game tournaments at involving professional players. Starting from December last year, however, the most viewed category of the entire platform is “Four chats” (in English “Just Chatting”), where the videos do not concern video games but are of various themes: monologues, conversations with users, impromptu reality shows, live personal videos and so on.
Since the beginning of the year, mainly due to the pandemic, all streaming platforms have increased their views: those of Twitch have increased by 50 percent between the first and second quarters of 2020, according to the report “State of the Stream ”of the analysis companies StreamElements and Arsenal.gg. And the categories that are not related to video games have grown more than all. The “Chat” section went from 166 to 176 million hours viewed from June to July of this year, while the views of streaming dedicated to some video games dropped slightly.
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However, video games remain the most followed theme on Twitch and the most important market for the company. In the ranking of the ten most viewed sections, “Four chat” is the first, but the other nine are all dedicated to famous video game titles, such as “League of Legends” (second in the ranking) and “Fortnite” (third), whose views put together far exceed those of “A chat”. Twitch is competing with Facebook Gaming for video game streaming, and the most popular gamers are hotly contested. Ninja, who is arguably the most famous gamer in the world, has just returned to Twitch with an exclusive contract after a year spent on the rival platform Mixer.
Despite this, non-gaming videos are increasingly popular. In addition to the “Chat” category, live music channels are also popular on Twitch. The Verge website wrote in March that, due to the pandemic, many indie artists whose tours have been canceled have begun to do concerts and other live events on Twitch, to try and recoup some of their lost revenue. Also according to StreamElements and Arsenal.gg, hours seen on Twitch in the music and art category increased by 387 percent between July 2019 and July 2020, from 3.6 million hours to 17.6 million. Twitch has also signed exclusive deals to stream some famous artists, such as American rapper Logic and Mike Shinoda, one of the band members Linkin Park.
Other sectors besides video games in which the use of Twitch is growing: on September 17, the fashion company Burberry will be the first to broadcast the show exclusively in streaming, on Twitch. The event will not be attended by a live audience, and everything can be seen on the platform. In early September Twitch also rolled out a new feature that allows channel owners to watch videos in the company of their fans. It's called Watch Parties, and it works with Amazon Prime Video content (Twitch is from Amazon, remember). Who has a channel can start a TV series, put their live recording next to the video and comment on what happens, while the fans write in chat.
– Read also: The effects of the coronavirus on video games
Twitch is also used (little, but it's the first time) in the electoral campaign for this year's US elections. Some Democratic primary candidates had opened accounts on Twitch (one of the first was Bernie Sanders) and the platform broadcast live the conventions of both Democrats and Republicans (it also happened in 2016). The President of the United States Donald Trump also has an account, which as happened on other social networks has had problems with moderation. In June Twitch banned the channel for two weeks for hate speech after posting some tapes of public events in which Trump made racist comments.
