Gaming content on YouTube recently had its best week ever

Gaming content on YouTube generated 17 billion views during the week of March 30 – a record high for the video sharing platform.

The viewing figure was up 24% year-over-year, mirroring growth in other entertainment areas as citizens in many countries practice social distancing to help combat the spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19).

A report from social video analytics company Tubular Labs (via VentureBeat) compares viewing figures for different gaming categories in two date ranges, pre-Covid (February 10-March 10) and post-Covid (March 10-April 10).

Views were up across the board, but the biggest increases were for online multiplayer games (+34%), strategy games (+23%) and action games (+18%).

March 10, the first day of the report’s post-Covid date range, was also the launch date for Call of Duty: Warzone, Activision’s free-to-play battle royale game which attracted 50 million players in 10 days.

Tubular Labs said there were 60% more Call of Duty YouTube videos uploaded during the post-Covid period than during the month before, 17% more Grand Theft Auto videos, 6% more Minecraft videos and 3% more Fortnite videos.

Microsoft also announced record engagement figures for gaming services earlier this week, with Xbox Live active users approaching 90 million and Game Pass subscribers topping 10 million during the company’s third financial quarter ended in March.

Aided by coverage from YouTube’s most subscribed content creator, PewDiePie, Minecraft was the platform’s most popular game of 2019 with over 100 billion views.

Microsoft’s title comfortably outpaced Fortnite (60.9 billion views), Grand Theft Auto (36.9 billion views), Garena Free Fire (29.9 billion views) and Roblox (29.6 billion views) to top YouTube’s annual video game rankings.