Gaming in India has grown exponentially in the past two years. As per Facebook gaming’s Business Today report the viewership of Facebook gaming has shot up by a whopping 530 per cent which is almost 6x growth rate since last year.
With the burgeoning popularity of gaming, Facebook gaming is not just becoming a platform for playing games but also to watch games which others’ are streaming. Basically Facebook is taking a holistic approach by engaging gamers, streamers, viewers as well as game publishers under the sun to witness a holistic growth in the gaming sector.
As per ET report Facebook India director and head of partnerships Manish Chopra said, “For the last two years, we’ve been pretty serious in growing and our numbers are very clearly evident. What we haven’t been doing is going out and talking so much about it. In recent months, we’ve seen dramatic growth, much larger than any of those platforms that are specifically gaming-only.”
According to Facebook nearly 200 million people watch games on the Facebook platform every month globally. As per the business today report there is no country wise breakdown on viewership number but it says that there are about 380 million people playing casual games on Facebook and out of which 234 million gaming sessions were recorded in India since July-August 2021. With that India ranked third with the most gameplay sessions during this time span 20 million people were also active in the Facebook gaming groups. PUBG Mobile, Garena, Freefire, Battlegrounds Mobile India, and Grand Theft Auto are among the popular games for Facebook streaming. In the same timespan around, 3.8 million stars (virtual rewards which is a micro-payment system) were paid to the casual gamers/streamers.