StreamHatchet: Co-op Games have doubled in popularity among viewers over the last 2 years
However, the research does not provide a glance back to the pandemic times.
The company defines co-op games as those where cooperative gameplay is the core feature. The study included games with the "co-op" tag on Steam and excluded games with the "PvP" tag.
The number of hours spent watching co-op games has roughly doubled since August 2022. This is largely due to the release of major co-op titles like Lethal Company, Palworld, Enshrouded, and The First Descendant.
❗️It would be interesting to see data from 2019 to account for pandemic-related figures.
The top co-op games by watch hours over the past year are Palworld (111 million hours), Lethal Company (97.8 million hours), Monster Hunter: World (63.4 million hours), ARK: Survival Evolved (59.9 million hours), and Helldivers II (45 million hours).
The most popular co-op genres are action (296 million hours), shooters (165 million hours), simulators (161 million hours), and RPGs (161 million hours).
StreamHatchet also looked at projects with "partial co-op." This includes games like Call of Duty (with its zombie mode), Granblue Fantasy: Relink, and other titles where co-op is present but not the main mode. When looking purely at viewership, 83% of views still come from these types of games.