The use of internet significantly accelerated the pace of our live, and Twitch, as the world's largest online broadcast platform, is a living proof of this simple truth. Online broadcasts are unstable, like a pebble in a mountain stream. Let’s see what surprises the first month of 2018 hid from us.

The key events of January were Overwatch League and ELEAGUE Major 2018. They strongly influenced the popularity of the disciplines, especially CS:GO. Hearthstone lost many viewers despite the holding of Hearthstone World Championship 2017, as well as Dota 2 along with ESL One Genting 2018.

A lot of new games released in January. One of them was was Sea of Thieves from Microsoft — the game proved to be an ideal of pirate life simulator with an almost infinite potential to simulate ridiculous situations. Still, it is in beta. Developers promise much more content when the game will release.

Monster Hunter: World attracted a lot of people’s attention for a short period of time. It is not strange — Monster Hunter game series is quite popular all over the world, but especially in Japan.

Escape from Tarkov and Slay the Spire both received big updates with new mechanics and gameplay features, thus many streamers broadcasted these games for some time. Both will be able to gather even more audience potentially, but they need more content and close contacts with popular streamers.

Heroes of the Storm received an opportunity to get to the top-20 most popular games due to two reasons: a major update ‘’Lunar Festival’’ and the start of HGS series of tournaments all around the world.