In short: YouTube announced today that it is giving YouTube Gaming a new home on its website. Taking it from gaming.youtube.com to youtube.com/gaming. Not a big change, but this effectively means that YouTube Gaming is being pushed back inside of YouTube instead of being broken out, like it has been for the past three years. The YouTube Gaming app is also being discontinued as of March 2019, with all of that content being included in standard YouTube now.
Background: YouTube announced YouTube Gaming back in 2015, this was shortly after Google lost out on a bid to purchase Twitch – Amazon swooped in and acquired the game streaming network. So with Google already having the world’s largest video site, it decided to add a gaming component to it. This included a dedicated site for gaming videos, as well as live streaming gameplay, and even a YouTube Gaming app. According to YouTube, it has done fairly well, but it was always a bit strange that YouTube had this separate from the rest of YouTube. Over 200 million logged-in users watch Gaming content every single day, and over 50 billion hours of gaming content was watched in the past year.
Impact: What this means is that YouTube Gaming isn’t going away. YouTube is just making it easier for users to watch different gaming videos and gameplay, without needing to go to a separate site or use a separate app. It was a bit odd that there was a separate app for YouTube Gaming in the first place, so it’s not too surprising to see that going away, however. Now with this change, YouTube is also introducing “Gaming Creator On The Rise” which will showcase gaming creators that are gaining subscribers and recognition. YouTube already does something similar with other content on YouTube, and it’s a good way to help out their creators, who are the real reason why YouTube makes so much money in ads these days.