Twitch, the live streaming service and popular community for gamers, recently announced that it reached 45 million unique viewers per month in 2013, up from 20 million the previous year. Twitch also noted in its year-end report that its viewing minutes doubled last year to 12 billion per month. Since its debut in 2011, Twitch has become the go-to streaming platform online for casual and pro gamers, thanks in part to the rising popularity of eSports titles.

According to the 50-page Twitch report: “New kinds of live video have come to the fore, along with new types of partners appearing on Twitch — all while the broadcasting community has continued to grow at breakneck speeds. The year ended with Twitch officially claiming its place as the world’s largest video site in gaming.”

“When video game historians look back on gaming a decade from now, 2013 will be the year they cite as the tipping point of streaming,” said Matthew DiPietro, Twitch VP of marketing. “Every major event, publisher, developer, and media outlet in the gaming industry had a presence on Twitch, and streaming became an ever-present piece of the gaming experience. And it’s only going to get bigger.”

Digital Trends reports what users are doing on the platform. “The top four activities on Twitch are: Watching live streams, of course, which 99 percent of users do; 61 percent also chat with the community; 38 percent watch video highlights; 25 percent broadcast their own gameplay. More than 58 percent of Twitch viewers watch more than 20 hours on Twitch per week.”

“Twitch found a new home inside of the PlayStation 4 console, and will soon land in the Xbox One, perhaps helping the service continue to grow in the current year period,” writes Alex Wilhelm for TechCrunch. “Though, to be frank, I’ve been unimpressed by the current per-channel viewership rates that PlayStation streamers have thus far engendered.”

Major League Gaming, which launched a new platform for streaming video game content, is a rapidly growing competitor.

“In 2013 Twitch established that it was beholden to no single game, and that its audience was sticky,” notes Wilhelm. “What it needs to prove this year is that it can replicate its past success and garner new fans among the ranks of console gamers.