Halloween Fuels Horror Games on Live Streaming

Key insights

6 takeaways

01
Horror games generated 836 million hours watched across Twitch, YouTube, and Kick over the past 12 months, despite accounting for only 1.2 million hours of total airtime.
02
Halloween significantly boosts engagement, with horror game viewership doubling from September to October 2024 and accounting for 4.7% of all live-streaming viewership during that month.
03
Dead by Daylight is the dominant title in the genre, accounting for 28.5% of all horror game viewership over the past year with 238 million hours watched.
04
Co-op horror titles are highly effective at driving viewership, with Lethal Company and Phasmophobia generating 102 million and 26 million hours watched, respectively.
05
Horror content is highly efficient at generating viewership compared to longer-form genres like RPGs, often leveraging remakes and DLC releases to maintain momentum.
06
Emerging interactive technologies, such as Twitch integration in games like Death Damnation, allow audiences to directly influence gameplay, representing a growing trend in streamer-viewer engagement.

Summary

The live streaming industry increasingly leverages Halloween as a strategic marketing period to drive engagement, mirroring trends in film and music. By analyzing data from the IGDB database across Twitch, YouTube, and Kick, the industry demonstrates that horror-themed content is highly efficient at generating viewership. Over the past 12 months, horror games accounted for 836 million hours watched from only 1.2 million hours of airtime, highlighting a strong return on investment compared to longer-form genres like RPGs.

During October 2024, horror game viewership doubled compared to the previous month, with horror-tagged streams generating 15.3 million hours watched and holiday-specific "trickortreat" tags contributing an additional 6.7 million hours. Despite this seasonal surge, horror content typically represents a modest portion of total live streaming viewership, peaking at 4.7% during the Halloween period. Legacy titles and co-op experiences remain the primary drivers of this engagement, with Dead by Daylight alone accounting for approximately 28.5% of total horror viewership over the past year. Other successful titles include Lethal Company, Phasmophobia, and recent remakes such as Silent Hill 2.

The analysis concludes that the future of the genre lies in increased interactivity. Emerging horror titles are beginning to integrate directly with live streaming platforms, allowing audiences to influence gameplay in real-time. This evolution toward shared, participatory experiences is expected to become a standard engagement model for creators. As technology advances, the horror genre remains a significant, high-efficiency niche that publishers and streamers continue to utilize to capture consumer attention during peak holiday windows.