Blizzard teams up with Facebook to take down YouTube, Twitch

Apparently streaming video games online is big business, just in case Amazon’s US$1 billion acquisition of Twitch in 2014 wasn’t a big enough signal.

Now Facebook wants in on the action. They’ve already launched an extensive Live video product, which includes cash partnerships with publishers and plenty of exposure. Soon the Messenger button within Facebook will become a Live button, just in case you didn’t think Facebook was serious about Live.

Even so, their latest move may be enough to freak out Twitch and YouTube, which now has a YouTube Gaming component.

In short, Facebook are partnering with Blizzard Entertainment, the developers behind blockbusters like Overwatch, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, and Diablo, to bring live streaming to their PC games.

Blizzard said on Tuesday that they’d be adding a Facebook Login function to plenty of their games, which will eventually lead to:

incorporating Facebook’s Live API in order to create its own “Go Live” streaming functionality for its games. When this functionality is implemented, players will for the first time be able to livestream their Blizzard-gaming sessions directly to their Facebook timelines, and friends will be able to subscribe and be notified when new streams are available.

This is big news. Despite an already huge audience and hunger for gaming content on YouTube and Twitch, Facebook has a much more mainstream audience, one that could convince some streamers to switch. For players with a small audience too Facebook the idea of streaming just to your friends might also be enough to tempt some players to stream.

Without any plans for monetisation though, bigger users will likely stay put on Twitch or YouTube. Twitch has a pretty popular paid-subscription option for gamers, while Facebook so far hasn’t really gone too far into the world of revenue-sharing.