xQc totally dominated Twitch streaming in 2021 in just about every way

Isaac McIntyre
xQc streams on Twitch in purple room.

Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel has cemented his place as the reigning king of Twitch, topping the streaming charts in hours watched, active subscribers, and just about every metric on the Amazon-owned platform for the second year in a row.

Across the calendar year, xQc raked in a momentous 261m hours watched, according to StreamElements’ year-end report, beating other top streamers like Gaules and MontanaBlack by a landslide.

The French-Canadian star has well and truly earned his place at the tippy-top too. In 2021, Lengyel went live on all but twelve days, missing two three-day chunks in July and a smattering of silent November days as he moved house. When streaming, xQc plays a variety of games, including GTA and more.

One constant in Lengyel’s career is stream length.

The 26-year-old averaged a whopping 9.2 hours each and every stream across 346 of the year, which helped him stay atop Twitch standings in every metric.

xQc confused on Twitch stream.
Lengyel well and truly left his mark on the purple platform this year.

This year marked a notable increase in xQc’s presence on Twitch. In the past, the reigning king of the platform held a similar schedule, going live nearly every day, but limited his broadcasts to just a handful of hours.

Now, it’s not a rare sight to see him hit 24 hours live.

xQc’s year wasn’t without controversy either. In July he was whacked with a three-day suspension ⁠— one of the only times he missed consecutive days ⁠— over a DMCA strike by the Olympics, and then a month later was banned again for airing Kanye’s DONDA album despite warnings.

The star has also struggled, at times, to keep his huge fandom in check, often having to apologize for their chat-hopping and site-wide transgressions.

xQc leads Twitch hours watched in 2021 via StreamElements stats.
Twitch’s reigning king took out the top spot for a second year in a row.

One absence in xQc’s year was his long-promised Twitch subathon, which he claimed would overshadow Ludwig’s and run for 60 days. It was delayed several times, and he has since stopped mentioning it.

In the middle of 2021, the French-Canadian took several days off to deal with streaming burnout, which he said had been mounting up across the year. At the time, xQc admitted he “could go live,” but wanted to take time away from daily broadcasting until he “could make good streams again.”

xQc ends the year with 9.7 million followers on Twitch and a site-high 92.9k subscribers, a count that leaves him seventh in the platform’s historical standings.

About The Author

Isaac was formerly the Australian Managing Editor at Dexerto. Isaac began his writing career as a sports journalist at Fairfax Media, before falling in love with all things esports and gaming. Since then he's covered Oceanic and global League of Legends for Upcomer, Hotspawn, and Snowball Esports.