YouTube Gaming has been out long enough to get a true impression, rather than opening day hype. And my thoughts are this service needs a hell of a lot more work.
It would be accurate to call YouTube Gaming anemic. I have a difficult time is assessing numbers, because the desktop portal still doesn't work for me. The service gave me a "funny" meme telling me it was down and to try later, and I do use those quotes with full satirical effect. As of the day this article is posted, it still doesn't work.
The Android app works, and although the phone apps are a topic for another day, I can tell the biggest streamers only pull in a few thousand views during a livestream. Now these numbers entirely depend on snapshots in time. The biggest streamers come on only during certain hours of the day, whenever they schedule their streams, but the service has been out long enough for us to see the migration effect taking place.
The effect is small. That goes to show Google shouldn't have let Twitch slip through their fingers.
Google hurts itself with ContentID. When Twitch was getting serious about being purchased, they had to deal with their copyright problem. Gaming is a strange grey area where the vast majority of games being recorded and stream are done so illegally, if the word illegal carries any weight at all. Some developers and publishers give explicit right to free use, while the vast majority of publishers keep their mouth shut and enjoy the free publicity.
Still, games are a collection of more than just programming, and the biggest proponent to ContentID are music companies. More often
This created a market for a streaming services like old Twitch, and Hitbox.tv stepped up to the challenge. And Hitbox is nice, but it's not a serious competitor. Here is where a company with an inferior service can afford the superior marketing plan, but I digress, I don't think Twitch is all that bad.
There are no specifics about why the deal with Google fell through, but Amazon ended up purchasing Twitch instead. Now a tech giant owns the standard streaming service, and Google would much rather that tech giant be them.
Cue YouTube Gaming.
While I haven't been able to use the YouTube Gaming desktop mode since launch, I have watched several streams through my phone. It's about the same as one would expect streaming to look like.
An issue I saw, and it relates to the unaware YouTuber as much as YouTube themselves, is multiple linked channels play the same livestream. The app gives me little information about the details of a channel, and the lack of tabs means I'm unable to browse around to see who else is streaming. I watched a YouTuber play The Witcher 3, because I recently purchased the game and wanted to see how it played in action before opening up the packaging. While I was watching, I thought it would be fun to be in chat. So I posted, and noticed the YouTuber was responding to another chat. It turns out the real stream was on the stream above mine, and I wasted my time even rubbing the brain cells together to type messages.
It was a real turn off, but just as much my fault as the streamer themselves.
I do admit to seeing many of the benefits of streaming on YouTube Gaming. On an abstract level, the more giant companies entering a marketplace, the more competitive it becomes, which is a net benefit to streamers and viewers.
The first convenience is everything stays in the Google ecosystem. There is no two week VoD on Twitch that must be transferred to YouTube. Once the YouTube livestream ends, it immediately begins processing into a regular video.
Adsense revenue is easy to establish on YouTube, so no doubt channels will experience an uptick in revenue if they also stream.
The issue is that ad money just doesn't pay the bills. It's no longer the early days of YouTube where Google invested $100 million into YouTubers. Yes, people still make a living with ad money, but it is no longer the golden goose it once was; those days are long past.
Working YouTubers can earn more money by finding a regular job. Donations and paid subscriptions are the lifeblood of streamers, and in this area Twitch is king.
The more steps something takes, the less people follow to completion. I understand writing this article follows the same rule. The longer the article, the more paragraphs a person has to read, the less people will reach the end or read to completion. No sane person will place all their eggs into the unproven YouTube Gaming basket, because that involves a donator to not only follow them, but start an account, then find where to put their credit card information, then subscribe to the new account, and then donate; and all for just one person. It's not feasible, and it's the reason no major streamer is jumping ship.
Likewise, ContentID rules the YouTube roost. Yes, a streamer may potentially earn more revenue, but if that video gets flagged, they will see none of the money and ads will be placed on it regardless if the YouTuber wants it or not. I for one don't agree with it, and think YouTubers deserve their self-employment autonomy. And that's really what it is, stripping the individual of power.
YouTube will remove 80% of the content of a channel because of ContentID, and this individual was lucky he wasn't rammed with an immediate three copyright strikes that deletes a channel.
On Twitch, watching VoD's is the minority. It's all about the now. Streamers have schedules and viewers come for the chance to interact with the streamer and with the chat. The system isn't perfect, but it does function.
Overall I'm excited about what YouTube Gaming will mean for streaming services. As I mentioned before, Hitbox is a viable alternative, but Twitch isn't going to change their rules or add additional features in response to Hitbox, but they will for YouTube Gaming. If YouTube Gaming is big enough that if they figure out how to pay streamers better, if they find out how to improve their service in such a way that viewers flock to them, then Twitch will respond in kind, and then all streamers and viewers will benefit as a result.
Both YouTube and Twitch have integrated streaming on major consoles, and the streaming market is heating up, so I can't wait to see what happens in this wild and crazy future of ours.
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