The big picture: Twitch expects to once again host TwitchCon in person starting next summer. The first event, TwitchCon Amsterdam, will take place in July 2022 followed by TwitchCon San Diego in October. The team is hopeful that they'll be able to pull off the in-person events, but added that safety is their top priority and that they will closely follow local health guidelines and recommendations over the coming months.

Microsoft may have given up on forecasting the end of the pandemic, but others are a bit more optimistic.

Twitch in its announcement said last year was a special one for them, as they saw the biggest growth in viewership since the company launched a decade ago. In 2020, Twitch welcomed their 50,000th partner and added 8,550 new partners as well as 584,000 affiliates. In total, the service now has over 1.2 million affiliates.

Indeed, there are a lot of new faces on Twitch, and with the pandemic, many of them have not had the opportunity to meet other community members face to face. A couple of in-person events could remedy that and help the platform grow even faster, but it'll all depend on what the pandemic situation looks like next summer.

Twitch canceled its 2020 and 2021 TwitchCon events due to the ongoing pandemic. Instead, the company put on a virtual convention called GlitchCon that took place on November 14, 2020. The 12-hour event featured more than 425 streamers and managed to raise $1 million for the AbleGamers foundation.

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Twitch didn't share specific event dates or provide information on venues and ticket prices for its 2022 events, but those details will come in due time.