YouTube bids farewell to paid channel services in YouTube Gaming, sponsorships to be the new focus

YouTube has announced that it would no longer go ahead with it’s paid channel services, rather it will now focus on sponsorships. This is as of now only with YouTube Gaming. [caption id=“attachment_4013843” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters[/caption] Paid channel services which were introduced in 2013 in YouTube, will now be put to an end. Rather it has decided to introduce another way of monetization, which is through sponsorship. In this method, the creators ask for sponsorship. This includes selling of digital goods from the creator side. These digital goods would be sold via a digital channel. Meanwhile, fans can also support them by offering a monthly $4.99 donation. This sponsorship would be a voluntary effort. Those who will sponsor will also get sponsor benefits. So for instance, players streaming on YouTube Gaming could get benefits like immunity from slow mode, access to sponsor chat, custom badges or emojis. YouTube had been testing with this idea in games like Rocket Beans and Game Attack. YouTube will begin testing this feature in non-gaming channels as well. Through this, according to the YouTube blogpost, it intends to focus on YouTube Red and Super Chat. YouTube foray into sponsorship in non-gaming content comes at a time when streaming services like Netflix, Amazon are focussing on subscriptions. **In 2016** , YouTube Gaming was made available in India, Philippines and Malaysia. The service was Google’s foray into the live game-streaming space, which was then dominated by Twitch. While the desktop version of the site was live for a while, the YouTube Gaming app also came into the picture. It was soon made available for Android and iOS. The app offers easy switching between live streams of games as well as recorded sessions. One feature not available on Twitch but available on YouTube Gaming is the ability to rewind and catch up to the stream while it is still live.