
The YouTube Gaming app shuts down this week - gcatalfamo
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/05/googles-killing-the-youtube-gaming-app-this-week/
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niknetniko
This is actually a shutdown that makes sense to me: why would it need a
separate app/website? I don't think it was actually really useful for most
people:

* As a standalone gaming streaming service, I don't think it ever had the potential to dethrone Twitch, for various reasons already said by other commenter

* On the other hand, if you are a heavy YouTube user, it doesn't add anything: almost all features are available in the main YouTube app.

Basically, it always seemed redundant to me.

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midniteslayr
IIRC YouTube Gaming was created to establish streaming on YouTube. When it was
created, they didn't allow streaming on the main YouTube app. That all changed
in about 2015, when they started bringing the livestreams in to YouTube
proper.

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xemdetia
I feel like this article misses the point when it describes the lack of
content creator/viewer interest as not being a market leader. The rhetoric
from the gaming content creator YouTube community is that the money for twitch
is just flat superior to whatever you could make on YouTube in the current
market, and they can collect what they can by dumping the VOD's on YouTube. I
didn't see any evidence that YouTube Gaming did anything to fix that or any of
the other problems that seems to be plaguing the individual/small group
content creators when it comes to Content ID, mature video tagging, or
probably some things I am forgetting.

I think if the YouTube Gaming property did more to separate itself identity-
wise from YouTube (even if it was just YouTube under the hood) it would have
stood more of a chance. Maybe it was a good test pool for live streams, chat,
and that sort of thing but it felt like those things were already started (a
search indicates it was kicked off YouTube Live in 2011 where YouTube Gaming
started in 2015).

~~~
Shivetya
Plus many content creators in games have been driven off youtube proper by
DMCA accusations. So some twitch streamers have completely abandoned their YT
side simply because it is far easier to harass them on that channel than
within twitch itself. Youtube is a damaged brand in many of these content
creator's eyes

then throw in that twitch pretty much hit a home run last summer/fall with the
ability to easily gift subscriptions and many streamers saw their numbers
explode. Once you have an audience if you are in popular categories you can
get sponsorship for playing specific games and that is money not easily
recouped by changing platforms.

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jaimex2
The subscriber + hours viewed restriction to monetize combined with rampant
copyright take down trolling, an algorithm that hides your content from
viewers and adpocalyses just made the Youtube gaming platform not worth
anyone's time.

Why would anyone put up with that mess when Twitch is simple, works well and
is designed from the ground up for game streaming?

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9erdelta
For one thing, gamers who used to upload recorded game play to YouTube left
_years_ ago to live stream on Twitch. Second, YouTube's treatment of creators
I'd say has people primed to go anywhere else. So too little, too late, wrong
attitude towards the people making content. Finally, Mixer at least has a few
cool features, such as Hype Zone. Pretty sure YouTube gaming didn't offer
anything appealing/innovative.

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ben_jones
I actually used Youtube Live (as a viewer) a bit and found the experience
inferior to Twitch.tv . You could see the effort of Google devs to clone the
best features from twitch, but they just did a ~bad~ job. From the
graphics/material design, chat, etc., none of it would have even breathed life
if it didn't have Youtube/Google's userbase pushed into it.

Google product owners need to ask themselves, would this business be viable
without the artificial stimulus of existing Google users? GCP - yes. Youtube -
yes. Youtube gaming - no.

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awa
So they are just killing the alternate UX, the content is still there just
needs to be accessed via the main youtube website

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beckler
I'm pretty sure they're only killing this because it's going to compete with
Stadia whenever it gets released.

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hndamien
Stadia/YouTube stands a very good chance at being a Twitch killer. Gaming is
natively digital, so linking that data in a native way will make life very
hard for Twitch.

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slightwinder
Twitch is more than just game-streams and overall works well now. What
relevant difference can stadia make? AFAIK it's just a cloud-service, not
something that fundamentally would change the game-experience?

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hndamien
You can directly link into and share game states. I presume that a variety of
interactive observer modes would also be fairly trivial to accomplish based on
their architecture. This experience will be significantly different to normal
YouTube and Twitch. It won't kill Twitch, but the viewing method will be
different and likely eat into their market.

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dzonga
1 million x reason not to stay loyal to any google products. they get killed
in a flash

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sriram_sun
Wasn't gaming a thing during this year's IO?

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serf
the old silicon valley adage :

'move fast and break people's trust in your brand's product longevity, thus
alienating anyone from actually using it.'

I might have got that saying wrong..

~~~
xmprt
No kidding. After Google killed Inbox, I'm going to be a lot more wary of
trying out Google's new products. That and releasing half baked products like
Allo/Duo are why no one uses Google's new products and then years later Google
ends up killing it for not reaching enough people.

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charleshan
Another addition to [https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

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kyrra
Except not really, as it was just rolled into the main app and website.

[https://www.youtube.com/gaming](https://www.youtube.com/gaming)

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aiiane
There's a lot of stuff listed on that site that didn't actually go away, just
got rolled into something else or rebranded. It's not very picky about what it
chooses to list as "killed".

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xmprt
Also according to Google, Inbox was rolled into Gmail but I think most people
would agree that Gmail still lacks a lot of the important features that pulled
people to Inbox in the first place.

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kiran-rao
RIP Inbox. You won't be forgotten.

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Rebelgecko
it still works (more or less) if you use an old APK

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medof
I had never even heard about this product until just now. I guess it was just
too irrelevant.

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da_chicken
Same. I watch Twitch and YouTube videos, too.

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Paraesthetic
Google are getting very good at this whole shutting down of something which
doesn't quite make the usage levels that they want even though it might be
very popular. Surely this burning of the end user will get old to consumers at
some point and they will go elsewhere.

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bashwizard
There's a youtube gaming app? Amazing.

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seem_2211
Yeah, it's about time for Google to kill another product.

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byron_fast
What has Google killed other than Altavista?

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jnbiche
Here you go: [https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

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byron_fast
I mean killed in the market, not bought and shut down.

