Prizes of the Gamesmarking the end of the video game industry's year, its 10th anniversary show announced viewership records with an estimated 154 million global live streams, up 31%.
That compares to 2023's record-setting show, which reached 118 million live streams. As I noted from attending the event at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, the organizer of the show Geoff Keighley acquitted himself compared to criticism a year ago.
Through its streaming-native, frictionless approach to global distribution, The Game Awards delivered more than 154 million live streams across multiple digital networks, including YouTube, Twitch, Steam, TikTok Live, X, Instagram Live, and Facebook, as well as global viewers across China on a record number of networks. According to StreamCharts, Twitch, YouTube and other western platforms combined had more than 4 million concurrent viewers, up more than 10% from TGA 2023.
On YouTube, the 4K TGA feed delivered a 35% jump in YoY peak in the same period to 1.3 million. Across platforms (including co-streams), TGA on YouTube was up 28% to more than 2.17 million peaks in the same period. More than 4,500 channels made the show on YouTube, a new record.
The size of the prizes is impressive. Super Joost's Joost van Dreunen noted that The Game Awards has a larger audience than the Super Bowl. It has eight times the views of the Academy Awards, nine times the views of the Grammys and 10 times the views of the World Series.
The biggest moment for me was the tearful acceptance speech by Amir Satvat, who helped 3,000 people get jobs at a time when the gaming industry had laid off 34,000 people in 2.5 years. He received the first ever Game Changer award, and Keighley was gracious to recognize Satvat and his work.
Satvat helped people find jobs by creating an easily accessible job resource that brought together all open jobs in the gaming industry. Some credited him for just creating a spreadsheet, but no one else did what he did. Satvat, who works during the day at Tencent, is a volume and complete game work data that was not more than a month old and updates his work regularly, in his own time. He organized the job openings into categories such as artists and programmers so that people could find relevant openings more easily.
The emotional Satvat said that you can't make good games without great people, and that his parents taught him that his worth lies in the way he treats other people. He took these ideas as he created spreadsheets and more to provide jobs for developers.
The sad result of receiving this award in front of 154 million viewers? Some detractors on social media found fault with Satvat and falsely accused him of various evils like “creating a spreadsheet,” self-promotion and being involved in the layoffs. He was not guilty of these crimes, but Satvat noted that the fake messages gained enough credibility that he and his family received numerous hate messages and death threats. I know Satvat and his Good Samaritan workand these hate messages are just as wrong and misleading. Satvat defended himself in a post and many have come about it.
On Twitch, more than 11,000 channels co-streamed The Game Awards, and more than 4,500 co-streamed the show on YouTube, bringing the total to 15,900 co-streaming channels.
Globally, TGA achieved its biggest results ever with live distribution in China on the highest number of platforms including live distribution in China on Bilbili, Huya, Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Zhihu , DouYu, Baidu, NetEase CC, Tencent Video, QQ, Kuishou , HeyBox; in South Korea or CHZZK and Soop, and NicoNico in Japan.
Here are the historical live stream numbers for The Game Awards:
2024: 154 million
2023: 118 million
2022: 103 million
2021: 85 million
2020: 83 million
2019: 45.2 million
2018: 26.2 million
2017: 11.5 million
2016: 3.8 million
2015: 2.3 Million
2014: 1.9 million
This year at The Game Awards, Sony Interactive Entertainment's Team Asobi and Astro Bot won a total of four awards, including Game of the Year.
Studio Zero, Atlus and Sega's Metaphor: ReFantanzio took home three awards, including Best Narrative, Best Art Direction and Best RPG. LocalThunk and Playstack's Balatro also won in three categories, including Best Independent Game, Best Debut Indie Game and Best Mobile Game.
The show featured performances by Grammy Award-winning duo Twenty One Pilots along with d4vd and Royal & the Serpent who performed original songs from Season 2 of Riot Games and Fortiche Production's Netflix animated series Arcane. Snoop Dogg also took the stage to perform music from his new album “Missionary.”
Featuring appearances from the biggest names in entertainment and video games including Aaron Paul, Ella Purnell, Harrison Ford, Hideo Kojima, Isabella Merced, Khalid, Laura Bailey, Sam Lake, Shannon Woodward, Statler + Waldorf , Swen Vincke, Sydnee Goodman, Todd Howard and Troy Baker, The Game Awards brought the industry together once again for a one-of-a-kind night of celebration.
The Game Awards Orchestra's “Game of the Year” medley, conducted by Lorne Balfe, featured music from this year's beloved slate of Game of the Year nominees including Team Asobi's ASTRO BOT, Balatro from LocalThunk, Black Myth: Wukong from Game Science, Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree by FromSoftware, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth from Square Enix and Metaphor: ReFantazio from Studio Zero.
The Game Awards gave fans a glimpse of what's to come in gaming and entertainment with world premieres of upcoming projects, including Borderlands 4 (Gearbox Software), Dispatch (Adhoc), Elden Ring Nightreign ( FromSoftware, Inc. and Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.), Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet (Naughty Dog), Mafia: The Old Country (Hangar 13), Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds (SEGA), Split Fiction (Hazelight) Studios), Stage Fright (Ghost Town Games), and The Witcher 4 (CD Projekt Red).
The Game Awards are presented by Geoff Keighley and Kimmie Kim. Richard Preuss is the director, LeRoy Bennett is the creative director, and Michael Peter is the co-executive producer.
In a Facebook post, Keighley opened up more about how important this show was to him:
I can't believe I'm writing this, but The Game Awards this year was our biggest show ever, up to 154 million live streams – a new record, up over 30% from 2023.
Every year I tell our team that we can't expect the show to keep growing – what goes up must eventually come down – but then, somehow, more people show up around the world and joining us to celebrate video games.
Numbers aside, this was a very special show for me on many levels, both personally and professionally. It felt like everything suddenly became clear about so many things. More than anything, I'm glad the fans and the industry enjoyed the show and I believe we have the best interest of the industry at heart. A big thank you to everyone who has supported us from the very beginning, through the good times and the hard times. I'm excited to think about the next ten years and where TGA and gaming will go. We will continue to build, there is a lot of work to do.
Source link