The last two years saw an incredible increase in the viewership of gaming content creators. For quite some time, the top place was dominated by Twitch streamer Imane Anys, better known as Pokimane in her live streams.
Now a recent report says that YouTuber Valkyrae has taken over the top spot and has become the most-watched female game streamer in 2020.
About Valkyrae
Rachel Hofstetter, popularly known by her avatar name Valkyrae, is German-Filipino by birth. After graduating in arts at community college, she did various jobs before working into GameStop. During this time she began sharing her passion in gaming on Instagram, which made her gain followers.
Later she began live streaming on Twitch in 2015 and also posted videos on Youtube. She creates gaming content for 100 Thieves, an American esports team, where she is the first female member. Last year in January, she left Twitch and now exclusively streams for Youtube.
She has won the award for ‘Content Creator of the Year’ at the 2020 Game Awards.
Valkyrae’s Rise in Popularity
2020 has obviously been a catalyst to the growth of all who have been involved fully or partly online. For live streamers, especially game streamers, the growth is exponential. While Valkyrae has been streaming for Fortnite since 2019, it is later in 2020 that she struck the hot iron.
The newly popular titles Among Us and Fall Guys played a vital role in her growth despite her recent migration to Youtube only.
Among Us certainly emerged as the most popular game, with a lot of youtubers and memesters milking the opportunity. However, Valkyrae considers her audience well and plays whatever is demanded.
Overthrowing Pokimane
The report from Stream Hatchet clarifies the numbers and adds that female streamers are gaining popularity with time, closing the gap with their male counterparts. Last year, Valkyrae’s viewership increased by a gargantuan 7,304% in hours.
As you can see, there is not much of a difference as Pokimane was watched 23.3 million hours and Valkyrae was watched 23.6 million hours. Getting deeper, the difference comes down to 300,000 hours more or less.
While Valkyrae claims she had a rough start in the beginning of 2020, with joining 100 Thieves and moving to Youtube; the numbers definitely say that she has gotten along and this change has been fruitful.
Apart from Valkyrae and Pokimane, the other top female streamers include Korean streamer saddummy (20.1 million), Virtual Youtuber Usada Pekora (14.6 million), and Jinnytty (14 million). Valkyrae currently ranks 63 among all the game streamers, with xQc, Gaules, and summit1g owning the top 3 spots.
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