A little more than three years after the launch of YouTube Gaming, it's been revealed that the app is shutting down.
YouTube today said that it's launching a gaming-focused destination on its service at youtube.com/gaming, and as a result, it's shutting down the YouTube Gaming app in March 2019. The new gaming section of YouTube will show personalized gaming content based on what you like, top live games, and the latest gaming videos from your subscriptions, as well as dedicated sections for live streams and trending videos.
Another focus of this new YouTube gaming destination is to help smaller creators grow. Each week, YouTube will highlight a new gaming creator who is "On The Rise" to help more users discover their content. This feature is launching in the U.S. first and will roll out to other countries in the future.
As for why YouTube has decided to shut down the YouTube Gaming app, it says that it can reach far more people with the core YouTube experience than with a dedicated YouTube Gaming app. That makes sense, as YouTube is the best-known video site on the internet, but not everyone that uses it may know that there's a dedicated section and app for gaming. By bundling YouTube Gaming's features into the core YouTube experience, YouTube can likely help gaming creators to grow more than they could with YouTube Gaming.
Did you ever use YouTube Gaming?
