StreamElements has released its October 2022 State of the Stream report. In addition to an overview of the market, StreamElements also covered the month’s top streamers and games.

Post-pandemic normal

According to data partner Rainmaker.gg, livestreaming platforms — particularly Twitch — are settling into a new post-pandemic normal.

While monthly hours watched in 2022 follows similar seasonal patterns to 2021, the monthly totals are down year-on-year. For Twitch, the new monthly baseline appears to be about 1.7 billion-plus hours watched. In October 2021, this benchmark was approximately 1.9 billion hours watched per month.

The pandemic was a watershed moment for livestreaming, introducing millions of new viewers to Twitch, YouTube, Facebook Gaming and more. A drop from pandemic era highs are to be expected as restrictions are lifted, but it was unclear just how large this drop off would be.

Overall, the industry is still wildly outperforming pre-pandemic figures. Before Covid-19, Rainmaker.gg reported that Twitch averaged 1 billion monthly hours watched — a gain of 70%.

Gil Hirsch, CEO and cofounder of StreamElements added, “Twitch has reached an interesting point where we have a clear baseline for 2022 that represents a massive audience while growth has simmered beyond it. This…