TL;DR Takeaways by Hatchet:
- The Top 100 Horror games have collectively seen 1.25B hours watched over the past 12 months, with 70% coming from games with horror gameplay at their core
- Dead by Daylight is the most watched Horror game by far at 286M hours watched, with many other multiplayer horror experiences dominating the rankings
- Halloween brings a boost of +60% hours watched for Horror-related streams, aided by custom platform-wide events like Twitch’s Stream-o-Ween
Halloween has become a holiday on par with Christmas in terms of marketing potential, hyping up customers with a bevy of spook-themed events. But for the live-streaming community, Halloween and Horror games more generally hold a special power: Horror games formed the bedrock of early internet content, with Let’s Plays of jumpscare-riddled experiences driving millions of views and propelling creators to fame.
Since then, Horror has only grown on live-streaming. Horror games across all subgenres have exploded, some even being live service titles, and the potential for these games to launch year-round activations has spread a pall of darkness over the entire year. Of course, Halloween is still the summoning portal through which the biggest Horror moments are conjured. So, in this article, we’re gathering our courage and exploring the depth of Horror games on live streaming over the past year.
Horror Gameplay and Horror Theming Have a Death Grip on Live Streaming
Horror games can be hard to pin down, with some purely horror titles focusing on gameplay (scares, tension, survival) while others simply adopt the trappings of the horror genre (gothic motifs, gore, monsters). For the purposes of this analysis, we looked at every game tagged with the “horror” theme from IGDB and then we manually categorized them as either “Core” Horror or “Theme” Horror. To be completely fair, we’ve also allowed for some grey areas here by labelling certain Core Horror games that are lighter on scares and even Theme Horror games that are more like “Horror-lite” (examples in the next section).
Over the past 12 months, the top 100 Horror games have generated an incredible 1.25B hours watched across all platforms. 70.1% of that viewership came from Core Horror games vs. 29.9% from Theme Horror games, with Core Horror games slightly outperforming their poser cousins with just 62 titles vs. 38 for Theme Horror. The incredible performance of Core Horror games speaks to the ability of the genre to diversify itself into many different live streaming-friendly subgenres, including Survival and Co-op games. Theme Horror games can wield the aesthetic to success, but they also risk putting off players and advertisers who would rather a softer aesthetic (and that’s in genres that have an abundance of other options).
The Scariest Games (Or At Least Most Popular Horror Games) for Streamers
Looking at the top Core Horror games from our sample of the top 100 reveals some interesting trends. But first of all, we have to highlight just how far ahead of the pack Dead by Daylight is with 286M hours watched, almost 3X higher than second place Resident Evil: Requiem. Both those titles come with caveats: Requiem released in February 2026 so we’re capturing the full launch window’s hype (which has now died down), and Dead by Daylight had its 10th anniversary celebrations this June. But still, that means 1-in-5 Horror game hours watched comes from Dead by Daylight! For more info on why that is, check out our full article on Dead by Daylight’s event strategy.
Among the other titles, we have a mix of Survival games (Project Zomboid), so-called “friendslop” Co-op games (Phasmophobia, R.E.P.O.), and a couple mirrors of our top 2 games (Resident Evil 4, Identity V). Our favourite inclusion here though is indie low-fi horror title Granny (50M), a title that embodies the enduring spirit of indie horror titles’ popularity in online culture. While these titles tend to drive week-long spurts of popularity before petering out, Granny’s sound-sensitive gameplay and light puzzle solving have given it staying power.
Switching over to Theme Horror games, there’s a greater range of titles on offer. Leading the vanguard for zombie games is Day Z with 72M hours watched, with other zombie titles like 7 Days to Die and the classic Left 4 Dead 2. Speaking of old horror games still going strong, we also have Diablo II: Resurrected, the 2021 remake of the ever-popular 2000 title, making the list with 36.4% of the hours watched of the franchise’s most recent edition Diablo IV.
A lot of the titles here are action RPGs of various formats which use the Horror aesthetic to devise twisted creatures to cut through. Mortal Shell II may be the most questionable inclusion here, but the game leans into Horror’s appeal beyond its aesthetics with a secret location/sidequest that turns into a legitimate Horror experience.
The Call of Horror Content & Halloween’s Full Moon Effect
One issue when gauging the popularity of Horror content on live-streaming is categorization. Above, we’ve used a sample of Horror games to gauge the popularity, but this excludes non-gaming horror lovers who instead engage with other aspects of the community, such as cosplay, IRL exploration, art, and storytelling. To get our best approximation of general horror content’s popularity, we searched through stream titles containing the below keywords (accounting for different languages as well):
horror, jumpscare, jump scare, terror, miedo, medo, horreur, ホラー, 공포, 恐怖, хоррор, korku
Using this method, we found 224M hours of Horror-related content in 2026 so far. Obviously this is a massive underrepresentation due to the fallibility of user-generated stream titles (it’s not even close to the aforementioned 1.25B hours of Horror game coverage), but as a relative measure it can be handy. For example, we can clearly see roughly 20M hours watched of Horror content each month in 2026 which then spiked 60.3% in October to 34.1M hours watched. No surprises there: Halloween stirs up more Horror-themed content as a standard.
But the live-streaming community really rallies behind the holiday, especially on Twitch.To show you what we mean, we did another stream title keyword search. But this time we focused on Halloween-specific terms (again, across different languages):
halloween, spooktober, streamoween, stream-o-ween, spookyseason, trickortreat, хэллоуин, ハロウィン, 할로윈, 핼러윈, 万圣节, 萬聖節
Although this system isn’t foolproof, it’s the relative numbers we’re interested in. Over October, hours watched for streams specifically related to Halloween consistently grew until the actual week of Halloween where they more than doubled. This mounting Halloween content reflects demand for Halloween content throughout the month which might be better capitalized on by brands who want to associate themselves with the holiday but don’t want to compete with the biggest names for that rare “Halloweek” airtime.
Twitch is already supporting this mentality with its “Stream-o-Ween” event which runs all month long (details in the link). Instead of solely promoting only the biggest streamers, Twitch makes an effort to spotlight smaller streams across a range of content formats. The community has hopped on board too, as reflected by the 4.6M hours watched for streams tagged with “Stream-o-Ween” in October 2026. The holiday-themed tag shows support from the live-streaming community, backing up a litany of Halloween Twitch overlays and Halloween Twitch emotes created and sold to streamers rallying behind the Halloween marketing push.
Horror has always had a unique ability to survive between generations and genres. Even as trends come and go, Horror remains evergreen. The mix of AAA vs. indie and old vs. new titles on these lists is a testament to that. Where Horror has evolved, however, is in the way it utilizes new technologies to generate its scares. Live streaming is uniquely positioned to capitalize on these advancements and bring viewers one step closer to digital horror experiences.
Simultaneously, we talk a lot about the live-streaming “community”, and Horror/Halloween is where that bond shows strongest. Uniquely internet culture ideas like creepypastas and indie horror have an ability to cross language barriers which is more easily facilitated by live streaming. That’s what makes Horror one of the most interesting genres to play with as a creator on live-streaming.
To get the latest insights impacting streaming and socials, follow Hatchet and receive exclusive newsletter-only content: