The COVID-19 pandemic brought with it many difficulties, and, while its impact on game development cannot be understated, video gaming as a whole blossomed in 2020 and 2021. A perfect hobby for those indefinitely stuck at home, the gaming market saw astonishing growth because of COVID-19. This trend has also translated to Reddit; as per the site’s 2021 recap, gaming was the second most popular subject on the site, and every one of the top five most-visited subreddits were gaming-related.
With more than 100,000 communities, Reddit is an almost unfathomably broad site, but gaming has more or less always been a crucial part of the culture. The subreddit r/gaming is currently the fourth-most followed on the platform, with over 19 million Redditors having joined since its creation in 2007, and there are communities available for even the most niche games, consoles, and concepts out there.
With that in mind, r/genshin_impact, r/leagueoflegends, r/gaming, r/ffixv, and r/rpclipsgta are listed as the year’s most viewed subs. The dominance of games like Genshin Impact and League of Legends are undeniable, but the presence of a seemingly obscure sub dedicated to Grand Theft Auto roleplay comes as a surprise. With the disastrous launch of the GTA Trilogy and the announcement that Grand Theft Auto 6 is still years away from release, it seems as if it would be a difficult time for the community, but the presence of notable YouTubers and streamers like UberHaxorNova and xQcOW may account for the uptick in interest.
Furthermore, r/pokemonunite, r/deltarune, and, surprisingly enough, r/biomutant all experienced record growth among gaming-related subs in 2021, and one of the most upvoted Reddit posts of the year was an r/gaming thread which announced controversial publisher Electronic Arts’ loss of the exclusive right to publish Star Wars games. Additionally, the third-most upvoted AMA was from Bethesda Game Studios executive producer Todd Howard, the runner-up behind Microsoft founder Bill Gates and, oddly enough, a man who survived being swallowed by a whale.
The influence of gaming on the site is doubly interesting in the face of the dominance of cryptocurrency-related subs in 2021. Cryptocurrency was Reddit’s most-viewed topic of the year, and that may have something to do with the rise of dogecoin in many online circles. There was also a ton of attention drawn to r/wallstreetbets early in the year when its users collaborated to circumvent the short of GameStop stock. Despite all that, gaming still remained a highlight for Reddit users over the past year.
Source: Media Play News