To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing tech highlights from 2015 that still resonate 10 years later. This update was for the week of August 29, 2015.
YouTube Gaming was available on multiple platforms.
Image from the original announcement in June 2015.
“... live video is hard. It's hard to be interesting for two unedited minutes, much less an hour or three. One of YouTube's first big livestreaming initiatives is in video games, because with games there's always something happening, something to talk about.”
Streamcharts June 2025 stats show YouTube on top with 50% of live stream viewership. Twitch still has the most viewership of gaming live streams, but that's just a fraction of what people are watching.
Ten years ago this week, YouTube Gaming launched, along with a slew of new
live streaming features. Gaming content was eventually merged back into the
main YouTube site and app, but those live streaming features (and more)
remain.
A Platform for YouTube Gamers
YouTube Gaming was available on multiple platforms.
Image from the original announcement in June 2015.
In August 2015 YouTube Gaming launched, with a YouTube Gaming app and web
site, all focused around live and recorded gaming content.
YouTube automatically surfaced gaming content on the platform, and people
could find that content organized by game.
Some noted that this looked like it was trying to be a "Twitch Killer", and
they probably weren't wrong.
Twitch is a live streaming platform that, even today, is focused on gaming
content. It had been acquired by Amazon in the fall of 2014, and was clearly
competing with YouTube, at least in the gaming live stream niche. This was
apparently a valuable group of users,
despite some self-described gamers acting very badly.
Gaming was big in 2015, with gamer PewDiePie
holding the top subscribed channel slot on YouTube.
Gaming also drove the
launch of the Discord chat platform
earlier that year.
A Win for Live Streamers
But this wasn't just a big update for gamers. Along with the YouTube Gaming
content hub, YouTube launched a bunch of live streaming features and
improvements in 2015.
When the soon-to-be-launched YouTube Gaming was
announced in June 2015,
YouTube noted:
"Live streams bring the gaming community closer together, so we’ve put them
front-and-center on the YouTube Gaming homepage. And in the coming weeks,
we’ll launch an improved live experience that makes it simpler to broadcast
your gameplay to YouTube. On top of existing features like high frame rate
streaming at 60fps, DVR, and automatically converting your stream into a
YouTube video, we’re redesigning our system so that you no longer need to
schedule a live event ahead of time. We’re also creating single link you can
share for all your streams."
And when YouTube Gaming
fully launched in August, they announced a new home for live streamers on the web:
"We’ve also made it easier to create a live stream — check out the beta
version of our new way to go live at youtube.com/stream today."
And a few weeks later YouTube
added mobile game live streaming
to the Gaming app.
These new live streaming features were for everyone, not just gamers. Even
YouTube Gaming app features like
mobile app live streaming
and
live notifications
could be used by non-gaming channels.
A YouTube executive
suggested that gaming was indeed just the beginning:
“... live video is hard. It's hard to be interesting for two unedited minutes, much less an hour or three. One of YouTube's first big livestreaming initiatives is in video games, because with games there's always something happening, something to talk about.”
The view from 2025
YouTube Gaming 2025 at youtube.com/gaming
So what's happened since then?
In September 2018
YouTube moved gaming content
back into the main YouTube site and app. Gaming content
now lived
at youtube.com/gaming (where it
is today), and gamers and gaming content started being highlighted on the
Trending tab.
The YouTube Gaming app was retired in May 2019.
But all those new live streaming features stayed.
And just before YouTube Gaming fully shut down, in March 2019, YouTube
launched a new Live Control Room in YouTube Studio.
So while YouTube Gaming was not a Twitch killer, this was a big win for live
streamers.
Streamcharts June 2025 stats show YouTube on top with 50% of live stream viewership. Twitch still has the most viewership of gaming live streams, but that's just a fraction of what people are watching.
References
Internet archive,
gaming.youtube.com, June 2015 ("Coming Soon" page)
YouTube Official Blog, 12 June 2015, "A YouTube Built for Gamers" (original article)
YouTube Official Blog, 26 August 2015, "Let's Play" (original article)
YouTube Official Blog, 18 September 2018, "Gaming gets a new home on YouTube" (original article)
Ron Amadeo, Ars Technica, 15 June 2015, "Hands-on with YouTube Gaming -- Google built itself a Twitch killer"
David Pierce, Wired, 17 August 2015, "YouTube is the sleeping giant of livestreaming"
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