In 2019, we saw an influx of interesting news related to streaming. These dealt with both the growing competition among the platforms and the incredible records set by some of the esports events. Today we will make a summary of the last year's achievements of one of the most popular platforms – Twitch, focusing mainly on the popularity ranking of its categories.

Throughout the year, only three categories (LoL, Just Chatting and Fortnite) were constantly fighting for the first spot. These were often shuffled in terms of their order in the ranking, but in the second half of the year, the chances to win this race were increasingly more on the side of MOBA representative.

Still, according to the results of 2019, League of Legends became the most popular game by the number of hours watched. In one year, it has shown an 8% worth increase in this indicator. The game has left behind the previous owner of this title with a gap of 56 million hours.

It is worth adding that the Epic Games' battle royale still holds the majority of channels within its grasp. Despite losing 25% of the hours watched, it still holds the top spot when it comes to the peak and average viewers.

The things are going differently for the Dota 2, a direct rival to the League of Legends. Compared to the last year, this MOBA has lost two spots at once, dropping from the third spot to fifth. Another creation of Valve, CS:GO, also fails to show any kind of positive trends. Over the year, the shooter has dropped by one spot in the platform’s popularity ranking.

Even more interesting is the fact that both of these games have improved upon their hours watched indicators. This demonstrates that even improving upon own indicators does not guarantee keeping one's position in the ranking. Especially given that the project's rivals are successfully attracting the new audience, while Dota 2 and CS:GO can not even keep their existing player base intact.

At the same time, it can be noticed that only single autobattler game has managed to enter the top 20. Despite the “autobattler boom”, the real results are shown only by TeamFight Tactics. All the other representatives of the genre were left to bite the dust.

The state of affairs for the battle royale games seems to be ambiguous. Fortnite was among the top games of the platform. Apex Legends has the eighth spot in the ranking, although the game itself has been experiencing difficulties lately. But on the other hand, the progenitor of the genre, PUBG, has dropped 7 spots compared to the previous year, losing almost 50% of its audience.

But the last year was not only about the newcomers. The legendary, or rather, the classic version of World of Warcraft helped the game's category to take the seventh spot. Moreover, only League of Legends and Fortnite can boast of having higher peak viewers indicators.

But Blizzard was also hit by some negative news. Two of its games at once (Starcraft 2 and HotS) have left the top 20. In addition to this, the 2019 was marked with a decrease in ranking positions of Overwatch and Hearthstone. The shooter has dropped one spot and lost 8% of the hours watched. The card game has dropped four ranking spots at once, losing 32% of the hours watched.

An interesting situation happened in the Grand Theft Auto V community. After many streamers began their adventures in RP mode, the game literally got a second wind. It was among the top categories of Twitch for nearly the entirety of the year's second half.

Minecraft has shown good performance. The well-known sandbox game was reinvigorated. It’s hard to say who exactly is to blame for such a turn of events, but many famous users have been helping the game. Thanks to their efforts, Minecraft has managed to climb to the 12th spot (which also doubles as the number of spots it had to climb to achieve this).

As a result, we can see the League of Legends once again returning to take its throne. After getting silver spot in 2018, the game has finally regained the title of the most popular one. In addition, this year has demonstrated that not every newcomer to the industry has a chance to gain a foothold in it, even despite having a start both incredible and full of hype.