iPhone app from MCN Maker Studios follows stablemate PewDiePie onto the App Store

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

The Yogscast has become the latest popular YouTube channel to launch an official mobile app, as an alternative way for fans to watch its videos.

The app was released for iPhone over the weekend by Maker Studios, the multi-channel network (MCN) to which the Yogscast team is signed.

It follows the same company’s launch earlier in August of an official app for PewDiePie, its biggest star, as it aims to capitalise on the young, mobile-savvy audience watching its gaming channels.

The main Yogscast channel, promising “Minecraft and multiplayer comedy gaming with a drunken dwarf and a handsome spaceman”, has 7.1m subscribers on YouTube, and 2.7bn lifetime video views. It was the 84th most popular channel on Google’s online video service in June.

Yogscast has also spawned its own mini-network of Yogscast-branded channels – Sjin, Duncan, Hannah, Martyn, Rythian, Nilesy, Kim and Strippin – accumulating more than 20m collective subscribers.

The channel was launched in 2008 by British gamers Simon Lane and Lewis Brindley, initially focusing on World of Warcraft, before diversifying into Minecraft, then other games and entertainment.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Yogscast app.

Yogscast, PewDiePie and Maker Studios stablemate Stampy are part of a wider trend that has seen games become one of the most popular video categories on YouTube – with British channels leading the charge.

PewDiePie – aka Felix Kjellberg – hails from Sweden, but is now based in Brighton. Stampy creator Joseph Garrett is British, while gaming channels The Diamond Minecart, iBallisticSquid and Wroetoshaw are also UK-based.

Globally, the 100 most popular YouTube gaming channels generated nearly 3.5bn collective video views in May 2014, according to research by industry site Tubefilter and analytics firm OpenSlate.

The Yogscast app, like that of PewDiePie, streams videos from the Yogscast team, with fans able to personalise their feed and share videos on Facebook and Twitter.

For now, it is iPhone-only, leaving Android-owning Yogscast fans to use YouTube’s own app, or one of a number of unofficial apps available on the Google Play store.

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