Back in 2015, Google decided to directly take on Twitch with its own gaming-oriented streamingplatform simply known as YouTube Gaming. The service offered a significantly different design, that made it easier to find popular content and streams, and it offered a dark theme that was sorely missed in the main YouTube website at the time.
Today, the company has announced that it will be moving all of its gaming efforts to the main YouTube website. In the new gaming portal, you"ll find many elements carried over from the YouTube Gaming website, including highlighted content up at the top, dedicated pages for specific games, and much more. YouTube says it will also help smaller creators by highlighting "new and popular" streamers in their own category on the home page.
Many of the features that debuted in YouTube Gaming have made their way to YouTube proper, including the much welcomed dark theme, channel memberships, and more, which makes the standalone gaming portal redundant. Google also acknowledges that it can reach many more gamers and viewers through the main website than through a separate portal - more than 200 million viewers have watched over 50 billion hours of gaming content on YouTube itself in the last twelve months.
For now, you can still access the old YouTube Gaming website here, but it will be discontinued entirely in March of next year. After that, the new portal will be the only way to access the gaming-oriented features offered by YouTube.