People collectively watched an average of 653 million hours each week on Twitch, Facebook Gaming, and YouTube throughout 2021.

According to Stream Hatchet's 2021 Video Game Live Streaming Trends Report, overall live streaming saw an increase of 21% year-over-year.

The live-streaming analytics company also said that Twitch continues to take up the lion's share of viewership with 71% of total hours watched last year.

In terms of games, the report notes that the genre of open world games generated the most in viewership as Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto V, and Rust amassed 4.28 billion hours watched during 2021.

The second-most viewed categories were shooters and battle royales while Fortnite, Garena Free Fire, Valorant, PUBG Mobile, and Call of Duty: Warzone generated over 1 billion hours in views.

"What our latest report clearly shows is that video game live-streaming has managed to sustain a huge amount of the viewing numbers that the platforms picked up during the pandemic," said Stream Hatchet CEO Eduard Monsterrat.