The Game Awards said Monday that its eighth annual show on Dec. 9 reached 85 million livestreams, up from 2020’s 83 million and the highest to date.
Hosted and curated by executive producer Geoff Keighley at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, the video game industry’s biggest annual event — in which the family-themed action-adventure It Takes Two took the top honor — streamed live across all major social and digital networks around the world.
On Twitch, the show delivered 3.35 million unique viewers. Meanwhile, on YouTube, the livestream saw 1.75 million hours watched on the main feed, up 14 percent from 2020. And online, authenticated fan voting — in which members of the community could vote for their favorite titles in every category — increased by 27 percent year-over-year to over 23.2 million via the main Game Awards website.
Among the top appearances were Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Death Stranding game developer Hideo Kojima, Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz, Guillermo del Toro, Simu Liu and Far Cry 6 star Giancarlo Esposito.
“We are grateful we could return to an in-person ceremony in 2021 and continue to build on our success with significant international growth in 2021,” said Keighley in a statement. The show featured 30 world premieres of upcoming projects, including Sonic 2, Wonder Woman and the much-anticipated Horizon Forbidden West.
The Game Awards was launched 2014 and saw 1.9 million livestreams in its first outing. It reached double digits in 2017 with 11.5 million, going on to hit 26 million, 45 million and then 83 million in following years.
