Stadia will make YouTube livestreamers a lot more valuable

On Tuesday, Google unveiled its new video game streaming platform, Google Stadia. The tech behemoth stepping into the fairly new cloud gaming ring is certainly a big deal, but the effects it will have on YouTube’s ecosystem may be just as big.

With the Stadia announcement, Google revealed heavy YouTube integrations with the gaming platform. Cloud gaming services existed long before Google’s gaming platform, but they didn’t have the help of a massively popular video platform — nor did they exist at a time when internet speeds could handle video game streaming.

YouTube users watching a gaming stream will be able to launch right into playing the very game they were viewing thanks to a button which will be embedded on Stadia-based livestreams. While we don’t yet know if users will have to purchase each game a la carte or subscribe to an open library with Stadia, which games get the most play will almost certainly depend on who's streaming them. Developers already promote games via popular streamers; Stadia could carry that to the next level.  Read more...