Grand Theft Auto V is now well over a decade old, yet in 2025 it continued to prove how firmly it's embedded in streaming culture. Despite a year packed with new game launches and an increasing amount of non-gaming livestream content, GTA V finished as the second most watched game across major platforms, showing just how hard it is to dislodge from the top GTA 5 Modded Accounts.
According to Stream Hatchet's 2025 data, GTA V racked up more than 1.9 billion hours watched on platforms like Twitch and YouTube over the year. That put it just behind League of Legends, which reclaimed the number one spot with roughly 1.95 billion hours. Both titles were far ahead of the rest, with Counter-Strike 2 coming in third at about 1.28 billion hours, while no other game crossed the one-billion mark.
What makes this result stand out is how strong GTA V already was the year before. In 2024, the game reached around 2.0 billion hours watched and even surpassed League of Legends, marking one of its best years ever on streaming platforms. The slight drop in 2025—about 5%—came after a massive surge of more than 20% in 2024, suggesting that last year's numbers were unusually high rather than GTA V losing relevance. By comparison, League of Legends grew by around 4% in 2025, which was enough to push it back into first place but still below GTA V's 2024 peak.
GTA V's staying power also reflects the overall growth of live streaming. Total hours watched across streaming platforms continued to rise in 2025, increasing by roughly 6% year over year as audiences spent more time watching both games and non-gaming content. By the mid-2020s, estimates put the global gaming livestream audience well above one billion people. In that environment, GTA V holding onto a top-two spot says a lot about how valuable open-ended sandbox games are for creators who need content that can evolve without constant official updates.
The type of content people watch also plays a big role. Within the action and adventure category, GTA V accounted for about half of all hours watched in 2025, contributing roughly 50% of the genre's total 3.8 billion hours. A huge portion of that came from GTA role-play servers, especially on Twitch. These RP communities turn the game into an improvised drama, with streamers running businesses, enforcing the law, or creating long-running storylines. Because no two sessions are the same, viewers keep coming back even when there's no new DLC or major update.
Behind the scenes, player numbers stayed strong too. Ampere Analysis reported that in May 2025 alone, more than 19 million people played GTA V or GTA Online on Xbox and PlayStation, making it the third most played console game that month, not even counting PC players. On Twitch, GTA V regularly hovered near the top of weekly and monthly charts throughout the year, often just behind League of Legends. That close link between people playing the game and people watching it makes GTA V feel like a live-service title, even though it wasn't originally built with that model in mind.
As excitement around GTA VI continues to grow, GTA V's performance in 2025 shows that interest in the series hasn't cooled at all. Many viewers are using GTA V streams to stay connected to the world of Los Santos, speculate about what's coming next, or simply enjoy watching creators push the game in creative new directions GTA 5 Money On Xbox One. With nearly 1.9 billion hours watched in a single year, GTA V's influence on live streaming looks set to last right up to—and likely beyond—the arrival of its long-awaited successor.
