YouTube is shutting down gaming app in favour of web portal
- Wednesday, September 19th, 2018
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YouTube is shutting down the standalone video streaming site and app it launched back in 2015 dedicated to gaming. Instead, YouTube has introduced a gaming destination within the main YouTube platform.
Though the new gaming destination has begun its roll out, the YouTube Gaming app will not be shut down until March 2019. In replacing YouTube Gaming, the video-sharing site has decided to bring features such as Game Pages, Super Chat, and Channel Memberships over into the gaming portal on the main site.
The portal will deliver personalised gaming content based on what the user likes to watch at the top of the page, along with top live games and the latest gaming videos from the user’s subscriptions. And YouTube has also built dedicated shelves for livestreams and trending videos.
The gaming destination will put an emphasis on smaller creators, highlighting creators who are ‘On The Rise’ and in ‘Trending’. This feature will launch initially in the US before rolling to more countries in the future.
From creators like elrubiusOMG who has hit live gaming records, to Ninja, the fastest growing creator in YouTube’s history who helped usher in the era of Fortnite, or itsFunneh who became one of our biggest gaming creators by making us all laugh with Minecraft and Roblox videos, we thank you for building a strong gaming community on YouTube,” said Christina Chen, director of product management at YouTube, in a blog post. “We’re committed to helping gaming creators succeed and look forward to seeing how you all continue to shape the future of gaming.