YouTube: this almost unknown function dedicated to gamers will disappear

Between Google and video games, as you know, it has never been true love. After abandoning Stadia, the Mountain View giant is backtracking and removing the ability to play video games on YouTube.

Although the approach is less ambitious than in the past, Google recently announced its return to the video game scene with the arrival of games on YouTube. Called “Playables”, this service allows users to play titles directly from the streaming platform, whether from a computer or a mobile device. If we could then imagine that the Web behemoth would tease its competitor Netflix, which has already jumped headlong into the world of cloud gaming, Google will ultimately go no further. In fact, the American giant informed its users of the imminent closure of Playables.

Playing games on YouTube will soon no longer be possible

Many of you probably didn’t know it until now, but YouTube does indeed allow you to play games. If the offer is in reality not completely comparable to that of Netflix, which notably allows its subscribers to play the first three games of the trilogy GTAhowever, it leaves the possibility of enjoying small experiences directly from the platform (angry Birds, Lonelyetc.).

Although the function has only been available for a few months on YouTube, we now learn that it will soon be bowing out. Indeed, Google has just announced that the Playables section will soon disappear from the platform.

Available on iOS, Android and desktop for Premium subscribers, the ability to play games on YouTube will disappear in just a few days, more precisely on March 28.

A feature doomed to disappear from the start

If, at first glance, we may think that this announcement is linked to a problem with the popularity of the functionality, our colleagues atAndroid Authority However, they inform us that the date of March 28, 2024 had already been mentioned by Google when announcing Playables a few months earlier. The latter had therefore, from the start, been presented as an experimental feature doomed to disappear.

At this time, however, we do not know whether Google plans to reintegrate Playables into YouTube at a later date. One thing is certain, this would not be the first time that the Mountain View giant abandoned a feature a few weeks/months after its introduction to the public. Moreover, Google recently announced the removal of one of the oldest features of its search engine.

Source : Android Authority