Categories: YouTube Gaming

YouTube Gaming To Exclusively Livestream Overwatch, Call Of Duty Leagues As Part Of Multiyear Activision Blizzard/Google Partnership

Creators aren’t all Twitch is losing.

For the past two years, the Amazon-owned video platform has been the exclusive livestreaming partner for popular esports competition Overwatch League thanks to a reported $90 million deal with top developer Activision Blizzard. But now Activision Blizzard has entered into a multiyear partnership with Google that’ll see YouTube Gaming take over as the official livestreaming destination for its proprietary esports competitions, including the new Call of Duty League, Hearthstone Grandmasters, and, yes, Overwatch League.

Activision Blizzard and Google’s partnership (financial details not released) is for both livestreaming and game hosting infrastructure. Google Cloud will now serve as “the preferred provider” for Activision Blizzard’s game hosting, meaning its servers will bear the load of players logging in to and playing cooperative games like Overwatch and Call of Duty, and mass multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft. (Activision Blizzard very, very rarely releases player stats, but we do know Overwatch has at least 40 million players, that Call of Dutys latest iteration, a mobile game, was downloaded more than 100 million times in its first week after launch, and that World of Warcraft is a gaming touchstone.) YouTube Gaming is now the publisher’s global livestreaming partner and will exclusively broadcast live events to every country except China.

Subscribe to get the latest creator news

Subscribe

“We’re excited to partner with Google to drive the next generation of gaming innovation for the industry,” Jacques Erasmus, Activision Blizzard’s chief information officer, said in a statement. The company added that it chose to work with

Google because of its “highly reliable global footprint, advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities, and commitment to open source, creating a platform for building future gaming innovations.”

Ryan Wyatt, YouTube’s head of gaming and a former Call of Duty esports commentator, said the YouTube Gaming vertical now sees more than 200 million unique viewers each day. “Both the Overwatch League and Call of Duty League are the quintessential examples of world-class esports content,” he said. “This partnership further demonstrates our dedication to having a world-class livestreaming product for gaming.”

The duo’s first production together arrives on YouTube Gaming today, as it livestreams the first rounds of Call of Duty League’s 2020 season. The next big event, Overwatch League’s third season, kicks off Feb. 8.

This significant deal comes just a couple of months after the lukewarm release of Stadia, Google’s cloud gaming service that boasts a library of largely major-studio-made video games people can play on any computer, tablet, smartphone, or Chromecast device connected to the internet, no expensive console or dozens-of-gigabyte game downloads required. Stadia wasn’t terribly well received, with critics noting its lack of titles and inconsistent framerate (resulting in low-quality video display and gameplay lag). However, Google just announced plans to fix one of those complaints by adding an ambitious 120 games this year, 10 of them exclusive–so now’s a convenient time for it to pair up with one of gaming/esports’ biggest entities and get Stadia’s name in gamers’ brains.

Share
Published by
James Hale

Recent Posts

Epic Games paid $320 million to creators over 12 months. These ‘Fortnite’ developers were top earners.

Epic Games' payouts to creators haven't been quite as plentiful as Roblox's, but the Fortnite publisher is…

13 mins ago

Creators Guild of America offers proper accreditation with “the IMDb for everyone”

The Creators Guild of America is making good on its promise to provide support for digital professionals.…

2 hours ago

The 2024 NAB Show introduces 30-session track for digital content creators

The National Association of Broadcasters' longtime trade event NAB Show has welcomed content creators for…

2 hours ago

LinkedIn is testing its version of the For You Page

LinkedIn is the latest platform to experiment with a TikTok-style feed. The professional social network acknowledged that…

3 hours ago

More than 25% of channels in the YouTube Partner Program have monetized their Shorts

YouTube has been offering ads on Shorts for one year, and the results have been encouraging thus far.…

6 hours ago

Streamers on the Rise: ARIatHOME can write 30 new songs live in one Twitch stream

Welcome to Streamers on the Rise, where we find streamers who are growing their channels,…

22 hours ago