The YouTube Gaming app that was launched in 2015 to cater to the burgeoning online gaming community has been shut down. The streaming giant will integrate most of the features of the app within the main website.
YouTube Gaming will now appear as a tab on the left side of the main app/website, where you also find trending videos. And if you head to youtube.com/gaming, you’ll see a personalised showcase of gaming content on the top of the page. This includes new gaming content, livestreams from gaming channels and trending gaming videos. Games will also have their own landing pages. Within those pages, popular videos related to that particular game will be shown for easier discovery, along with livestreams and information about other games created by the developer and publisher.
The games pages also can be subscribed to individually. Further to improve discoverability, YouTube will give the limelight to smaller creators who produce good content. You’ll find them in the “on the rise” section of the page. The curated videos will be available only in the US for now and will keep changing every week. The feature apparently relies on both human curation and algorithmic recommendations and according to The Verge, issues in scaling up is why it’s being rolled out in a phased manner.
YouTube told The Verge that while over 200 million users viewed gaming content on the platform on a daily basis, hardly anyone would use the dedicated app to do it. YouTube’s director of gaming Ryan Wyatt said people apparently didn’t know what the app was for and what content it was meant to serve. Since the YouTube Gaming app wasn’t being used by many, new features like a dark mode, channel memberships and the likes didn’t get much traction. YouTube hopes that by integrating the app into the main site will allow people to actually use these features.
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