The Game Awards 2022 has officially become the most-watched iteration of the award ceremony’s history. The event reached over 103 million global live streams, resulting in a 20% increase over the previous year and marking a historic viewership success across several platforms, according to a new tweet from the official Game Awards account.
This year’s The Game Awards was nothing short of top Hollywood talent, Clinton-themed trolling, and a colossal wave of game announcements like Death Stranding 2 and Armored Core 6. Now that this year’s event is officially a wrap, it has been revealed that it has also become the most-watched iteration in its 9-year-long history.
Geoff Keighley’s incredibly popular award ceremony opened up with 1.9 million viewers back in 2014. And the gradual increase in the show’s viewership performance now stands with a towering 103 million, bringing 20% more viewers than The Game Awards 2021.
In the previous iterations, the award show doubled its numbers and witnessed an astronomical increase from 2019 to 2020. The show’s viewership number in 2019 was 45.2 million, but the following iteration in 2020 emerged with 83 million total viewers across YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, Steam, Facebook, TikTok Live, and Instagram Live, receiving a massive boost from the pandemic. But this year’s 20% increase in viewership shows how Keighley’s hit award show has expanded its domain in the gaming landscape, despite the lack of an exceptional factor such as the pandemic.
The viewership success also proves the rising interest in gaming around the world. Based on additional metrics shared by the show’s creator himself, The Game Awards “delivered over 11.5 million video views of the livestream, with a 28% increase in conversation volume YoY, 33% increase in unique authors, and 31% increase in The Game Awards hashtag usage.”
Keighley goes on to elaborate on the award ceremony’s performance on Steam as well, marking over 9.5 million unique customers, “with a peak audience of over 850K concurrent users.” It is safe to say that the Steam Deck giveaway was the main boost behind the viewership numbers on Steam, as Valve gave away a Steam Deck for every minute of the show’s broadcast.
