YouTube Gaming is Officially Shutting Down on May 30

Ryan Meitzler May 28, 2019 8:12 PM EST

After nearly four years as the dedicated space for gaming-related content, YouTube Gaming will officially be shutting down on May 30.

As one of the biggest sections of its audience, gaming-related videos and streams continue to be one of the ways that Google is looking to cement its foothold in the streaming video space on YouTube. Despite its best efforts to cater to that audience with YouTube Gaming, the app and dedicated website for that section of YouTube will be no more in just a few days.

Google has announced that it will be effectively shutting down YouTube Gaming on May 30, 2019, where the majority of features and content that was provided on the platform being reintegrated or merged into YouTube proper.

Instead, Google explained in a post on the removal of YouTube Gaming that all gaming-related videos and content will still live through the “Gaming” tab on YouTube’s homepage. So while viewers won’t be losing access to the videos and creators that they follow, some of the more specific features that were introduced with YouTube Gaming, such as dedicated hubs for specific games and lists of games that viewers could follow.

YouTube Gaming was originally launched back in August 2015 and intended to provide a unique hub focused solely around YouTube’s gaming-related videos and content creators, and aimed to be the platform’s answer to Twitch. However, the YouTube Gaming app never quite caught on and was discontinued for support this past fall, though it appears now that YouTube seems to be more or less completely wiping away the YouTube Gaming branding.

Despite the loss of trying to build up a dedicated community through YouTube Gaming, we’ll at least still have Google try to enter the world of gaming in a deeper way through its upcoming Google Stadia streaming platform later this year.