people can stop playing the game and still watch the content

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I cannot find the article, but TF2 is the most installed game on steams platform.

IIRC it clocked in at around 50+ million installs.

Even with games that people do not play anymore, they understand the content and can follow it because they've likely played it before. Which means they're more likely to watch that content, then a game they've never played before.

There's games I've watched content of, even though I don't play anymore.

jerma star and muselk dont count because they only made TF2 videos during the games peak and now with star and muselk have big overwatch platforms now like muselk was on TV and shit

dont think its possible for a new tf2 youtuber to do that i think bannys taken their spot and he doesnt get nearly that much views

interesting, I guess that theoretically does make it a semi-untapped market. Not trying to be one of those people who act like the game is ever going to explode, but that is an interesting fact, benevolent lord sigafoo

ster has kind of fallen on the wayside, I think he dabbled in overwatch competitive and then went full grumpy old man and just streams himself getting salty and whatever given game a couple times a week for like 600 viewers, in the meantime jerma gets thousands of viewers for streaming shitty old late 90s games

arguably, lazypurple and soundsmith have taken their place as the pub-god-youtubers

muselk panders to small fortnite children with red arrows and clickbait titles for metric asstons of cash

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it's just like rust dude. you think millions play rust?

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<100k concurrent
the popular youtubers get a few million views per video

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You're kinda comparing apples to oranges, YouTube views accumulate from when they are published, most of the TF2 player stats you're shown are fluctuating over a short span of time. I don't know of any website that keeps track of something similar for TF2 players, i.e.: how many unique players joined any server server since a point in time, the best you have is, I believe, how many people own the game on Steam, which is not very indicative.
The other thing is that YouTube is a lot more accessible than TF2, viewers may watch but not play at all.

https://youtu.be/ssr1PMSNvwk

Pub spy frag videos get like a million views every time that's where the money's at in TF2

TF2 has been "dead" in the eyes of the general gaming public for a while now, long gone are the days where TF2 would dominate any meme or gaming pages discussion forums, but because of how long it's been around and because of how many people have atleast played TF2 once it's still fairly popular. You also have to realize just how recognizable some of the mercs are, even people that have barely ever played TF2 in their life will still be able to identify most of the classes.

People like TF2 but the game is over a decade old so it doesn't get played much. Doesn't help that Valve has been trying there best to kill the game for over half that time. The MVM update / effectively killing comunity servers with quick play chased off a lot of people. Auto balance is obnoxious to the point that i cant even play pubs with friends anymore.

this guy is the best youtuber. no other content has made me laugh as hard as danielfromsl does. the dayz long con one was too good.