The inaugural VTuber Awards took place on December 17 and attracted attention across the Twitch community. Filian, the show’s VTuber emcee, drew a peak audience of 38,417 as she hosted a celebratory night on her Twitch channel.
The VTuber Awards included 25 categories, ranging from “VTuber of the Year” to “Most Chaotic VTuber.” Ironmouse, who has innovated the VTuber business while breaking viewership records on Twitch, won the top prize. She was also voted “Miss VTuber”. Other winners included Shylily and the VTuber organization Hololive.
Filian hosted the show from a green box at WePlay Studios, the production company that put on The VTuber Awards alongside Mythic Talent. To the thousands of viewers watching Filian’s stream, her VTuber avatar appeared to be standing in the middle of a gigantic, three-dimensional virtual arena.
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The first edition of The VTuber Awards was a palpable hit. According to Streams Charts, the five-hour broadcast rolled up more than 155,000 hours of watch time and brought 4,555 new subscribers to Filian’s account. The stream pulled in viewers from across Twitch, with 21 channels launching raids during the show.
The ceremony was a major stepping stone for virtual creators, who now have their own award show after previously receiving honors at the Streamys and the Streamer Awards. The most recent VTuber winners at those events are Gawr Gura and Ironmouse, respectively. Ironmouse also won Content Creator of the Year at the 2023 Game Awards. “In every awards show, VTubers are often a footnote or sometimes treated as a unique, strange thing, and so the idea for these awards is like, ‘Why not have a show for ourselves?'” Filian told TechCrunch.
After the conclusion of the VTuber Awards, VODs of the event can be found on YouTube:
WePlay’s Chief Visionary Officer, Maksym Bilonogov, told TechCrunch that the VTuber Awards were a “huge experiment.” Now that they’ve successfully gone off, WePlay will be encouraged to put on more VTuber-led events. It plans to open another production facility adjacent to its Los Angeles studio.
