The Among Us streaming wave

A four-month period in late 2020 during which the party game Among Us dominated Twitch and YouTube Live viewership — launching Valkyrae, Corpse Husband and Sykkuno into top-tier creator status and establishing YouTube Live as a viable creator platform.

Overview

Between September and December 2020, the party deduction game Among Us became the dominant category on both Twitch and YouTube Live. Multiple factors converged: the COVID-19 pandemic’s home-bound audience, the game’s low-friction multiplayer design, and a pivotal October 2020 lobby hosted by US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that peaked at over 435K concurrent viewers on Twitch.

Creators made

The wave was particularly important for:

• Valkyrae — became the most-watched female streamer of 2020 on YouTube Live.
• Corpse Husband — a faceless, deep-voiced creator who went from sub-200K to tens of millions of followers in weeks.
• Sykkuno — jumped from mid-tier Twitch streamer to consistent 100K+ viewership.
• Pokimane, Disguised Toast, Ludwig, HasanAbi — all participated in the recurring Among Us lobbies.

Legacy

The Among Us wave established YouTube Live as a creator-competitive platform for the first time, by demonstrating that a single breakout category could support a top-tier creator stack outside of Twitch. It also pioneered the “recurring friend-group lobby” content format, which remained a staple through the Fall Guys, Phasmophobia, and Lethal Company waves that followed.