Last year was a time of major growth for Twitch, the Amazon-owned livestreaming service for gamers, and today the site released a retrospective looking back at all of its major accomplishments for 2015, along with a few interesting stats about how viewers and broadcasters have been using the platform.

“What did Twitch watch in 2015? A lot. Actually, make that a whole lot,” the company said in its retrospective. “And when Twitch watches, the world notices. With an average of 1.7 million broadcasters streaming every month, you logged some serious minutes.”

According to Twitch, users watched a total over nearly 460,000 years worth of video content in 2015, and the site averaged over 550,000 concurrent viewers. Twitch’s peak viewership was even higher, with over 2 million users tuning in at once during what the company called “a perfect storm of esports content,” including both ESL One: Cologne 2015 and the League of Legends NA LCS Finals.

Esports continued to dominate the overall viewership on Twitch, with League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Dota 2 making up the three most-watched games for the year, in that order, and Blizzard Entertainment’s Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft followed close behind.

In addition to numerous professional gaming tournaments, Twitch also broadcast several major video game events in 2015, including all of the biggest presentations at last year’s E3.

Twitch is about more than watching games

While Twitch continues to be primarily a platform for video game fans, in 2015 the site also introduced the new Creative channel category, which gives artists a place to stream their creative process.

Twitch kicked off the new channel by running a week-long marathon of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross, and the event was such a resounding success that Twitch negotiated a deal to continue airing the show every Monday.

Bob Ross wasn’t the only source of warm and fuzzy feelings for the Twitch community in 2015. According to the company, over 55 different charity livestreaming events raised a total of $17.4 million for various charitable organizations, including the Children’s Miracle Network, the Prevent Cancer Foundation, Save the Children, and others.

“2015 saw the Twitch community come together in more ways than we ever thought possible,” Twitch said. “Thank you to everyone who broadcasted, viewed, lurked, chatted, cringed, celebrated, and laughed with us this past year. Here’s to more in 2016!”

photo credit: IMG_0331 via photopin (license)