China’s Fastest Rising Streaming Games

Niko’s China Games Streaming Tracker tracks streaming and viewing on China’s largest game streaming platforms. Streaming video is one of the most important components of the gaming and esports industry. We track and analyze the three platforms to produce weekly market trends and game rankings including: heat index, streaming hours, unique streamers, total tips/gifts, fans per streamer, and more.

This month we’re looking at the fastest rising games of February, including new games that entered the chart. Here are some of the key takeaways:

• There were 3.6 million active streamers across Huya, DouYu and Bilibili during February 2021.
• Total hours streamed across game related categories reached 18.9 million hours in total.
• There was an average of 135.5 million total viewers across all games each day during February 2021, up 4.4% MoM.
• Total tips and gifts to game streamers exceeded $148 million for the month.
• League of Legends: Wild Rift debuted at #22 in our streaming tracker for the month. The game was recently approved by regulators, has started a test server and has more than 20 million pre-registrations. A full launch is not far off.
• Tale of Immortal has been a surprise hit, moving up 83 places to #27 on the chart. The game released on January 27 and is an open world sandbox game based on Chinese mythology and creation that was developed by Chinese indie studio GuiGu Games. The title has been popular on Steam in China selling 1.8 million copies and reaching 185k PCU on Feb 4.
• Dyson Sphere Program is another Chinese indie game that performed well during February. The game launched on January 21 and is a space simulation strategy game developed by a team of 5 people at Youthcat Studio in Chongqing, China. The title sold over 350k units in its first week and has continued to perform well into February.
• Firework is yet another Chinese indie game that has found success on Steam and debuted at #104 in our streaming chart. The oriental horror puzzle game is developed by Shiying Studio and sold 100k copies in its first 5 days. While Chinese gamers have mostly used Steam as a way to reach domestic PC gamers, there is high demand for Chinese developed games globally as evidenced by requests for English versions of Tale of Immortal and Firework.
• Dead Cells, the roguelike metroidvania style game, debuted at #81 in our streaming tracker in February. Bilibili published the game for smartphones on Feb 3rd at RMB 30 and sold over 1 million copies. We have seen a number of paid mobile games perform well recently, including Muse Dash which re-entered our streaming tracker at #160.
• Valheim has been a hit globally, selling through 5 million copies in one month. The exploration and survival game from Iron Gate launched on Feb 2, 2021 and debuted at #98 on our streaming tracker. The low debut on the streaming tracker in China is primarily due to players’ unfamiliarity with the game and setting.