Quote From Out of Cards Update Jan 26, 7:00 PM Eastern: We originally stated that YouTube does not have the tech for in-game drops. This was incorrect and it is a more recent addition to YouTube with them partnering with PUBG, Riot Games, Epic Games, and FACEIT to provide in-game rewards. There is a high chance that the same system will be used with Blizzard's titles, though no confirmation has been made yet.
You can view YouTube's connected accounts system by logging in to YouTube and visiting account settings. Here you will find Connected accounts. Do note that you cannot use connected accounts with a brand account.
Friday afternoon, Google announced via a press release that they partnered with Activision Blizzard to bring Esports onto YouTube.
- The multi-year "strategic relationship" makes YouTube the exclusive streaming partner outside of China.
- This includes Overwatch League, Call of Duty League, Hearthstone Esports, and more.
- Activision Blizzard will also be making use of Google Cloud as their "preferred cloud provider".
- Prior to this, Activision Blizzard has been working with Google to boost analytics and "overall player experience".
No word on whether in-game drops are going to return for Hearthstone, though it should be noted that YouTube has the tech, it will just require Blizzard to implement it.
Are you going to miss Twitch Drops? Are you going to watch Hearthstone Esports on YouTube?
Quote From Google SANTA MONICA, Calif. and SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan. 24, 2020 /PRNewswire/ – Activision Blizzard and Google announced today a multi-year strategic relationship to power new player experiences. Google Cloud will serve as the preferred provider for Activision Blizzard's game hosting infrastructure and YouTube as its exclusive streaming partner worldwide, excluding China, for live broadcasts of its popular esports leagues and events — including Overwatch League, Call of Duty League, Hearthstone Esports, and more.
With hundreds of millions of monthly active users around the world, Activision Blizzard sought a partner to help enhance its gaming infrastructure, as well as deliver superior, low-latency player experiences. The company turned to Google Cloud because of its highly reliable global footprint, advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, and commitment to open source, creating a platform for building future gaming innovations.
Players will benefit by experiencing premium network quality-of-service, including low latency and packet loss when playing high-fidelity games on any device. They will also have optimal personalized interactions, as Activision Blizzard can tap into Google Cloud's AI tools to offer curated recommendations for in-game offers and differentiated gaming experiences.
"We've worked closely with Activision Blizzard for the past few years across mobile titles to boost its analytics capabilities and overall player experience," said Sunil Rayan, Head of Gaming, Google Cloud. "We are excited to now expand our relationship and help power one of the largest and most renowned game developers in the world."
"We're excited to partner with Google to drive the next generation of gaming innovation for the industry. Google Cloud's best-in-class infrastructure gives us the confidence to deliver great entertainment to our fans around the world," said Jacques Erasmus, Chief Information Officer, Activision Blizzard.
Additionally, beginning this week, YouTube will host the official live broadcasts of Activision Blizzard's popular esports leagues and events including the newly created Call of Duty League, Overwatch League, Hearthstone Esports, and more. The inaugural Call of Duty League season kicks off on Friday, January 24, with 12 teams competing in Minnesota, and the Overwatch League's 2020 season will follow on February 8. All competitions will be livestreamed on each league's YouTube channel and will include archived and other special content.
"With more than 200 million gamers a day watching more than 50 billion hours of gaming content per year, YouTube provides gamers and their passionate fans with the most popular video gaming platform in the world," said Ryan Wyatt, Head of Gaming, YouTube. "Both the Overwatch League and Call of Duty League are the quintessential examples of world class esports content. As a former Call of Duty esports commentator myself, I couldn't be more excited for Activision Blizzard to choose YouTube as its exclusive home for the digital live streaming of both leagues. This partnership further demonstrates our dedication to having a world class live streaming product for gaming."
"This is an exciting year for Activision Blizzard Esports as we head into the inaugural season of Call of Duty League and our first ever season of homestands for Overwatch League all around the world," said Pete Vlastelica, CEO of Activision Blizzard Esports. "It's our mission to deliver high-quality competitive entertainment that our fans can follow globally, live or on-demand, and to celebrate our players as the superstars that they are. This partnership will help us deliver on that promise at new levels, by combining our passionate communities of fans and players with YouTube's powerful content platform and exciting history of supporting next-generation entertainment."
This collaboration with Activision Blizzard represents Google's ongoing commitment to supporting game developer success around the globe. Across its business units, Google offers comprehensive solutions for game developers, empowering them to create great games, connect with players, and scale their businesses.
About Google
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Through products and platforms like Search, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google Play, Google Cloud, Chrome and YouTube, Google plays a meaningful role in the daily lives of billions of people and has become one of the most widely-known companies in the world. Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.About Activision Blizzard
Activision Blizzard, Inc., connects and engages the world through epic entertainment. A member of the Fortune 500 and S&P 500, Activision Blizzard is a leading interactive entertainment company. We delight hundreds of millions of monthly active users around the world through franchises including Call of Duty®, Spyro®, and Crash Bandicoot™, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft®, Overwatch®, Hearthstone®, Diablo®, StarCraft®, and Heroes of the Storm®, and King's Candy Crush™, Bubble Witch™, and Farm Heroes™. The company is one of the Fortune "100 Best Companies To Work For®." Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Activision Blizzard has operations throughout the world. More information about Activision Blizzard and its products can be found on the company's website, www.activisionblizzard.com.SOURCE Google Inc.
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It'll be on youtube and the hearthstone site internal stream.
It's gonna be on youtube. not sure what channel but it should be easy to find.
Dang that sucks. Was hoping there was one last hurrah for free packs.
Youtube for streaming. Now that's a joke i wasnt expecting
RIP twitch drops :(
Another blow against F2Players, making it harder for them to keep a competitive collection: First, they bring an adventure between expansions, and now they remove drops? That's just mean.
Well, it might at least be good for the environment if less people stream these mat he's?
only watched it for the drop's.
Aside from drops, commercials, etc this is a move that puts the end-user/consumer (=you) at a disadvantage. The games from Blizzard to Activision, the streams from Twitch to Google, the market gets less diverse. Nobody here wins apart from a few fat cats who (1) already have more than your entire bloodline has ever or will ever have and (2) don’t have the first clue about e-sports.
These kind of moves is what prohibits streamers of mentioning Hong Kong (had to come up with a HS relevant example).
Twitch is owned by Amazon, so regarding your first point there is not much of a difference. But they do have more of an e-sports culture.
As for the handling of Blitzchung's protest, that was done entirely by Activision Blizzard; Twitch had no role in that. It seems that Bobby Kotick was the one pulling the strings there and the only game he seems to be passionate about is making as much money as possible. Which is probably also the motivation behind this move.
Well yes, that was kind of my point. The best way to make money is to limit market competition/diversity. This is hardly ever in the end-users interest.
Twitch is indeed owned by Amazon, so there's no real difference on corporate size behind the streaming service. That aside though, Twitch is still marginal compared to YouTube when it comes to online video streaming - even for live content (although not necessarily for e-sports). If more big players follow suit and move e-sports from Twitch to YT, Twitch will ultimately become another MySpace.
I don't know how things work exactly, but YouTube has drops too.
Twitch drops (especially the granted ones) were a really sweet way to give people a tad of free stuff. With the game increasing in its cost with time, I wonder what (and if) they'll come up with next.
Where is your source that Youtube has drops? I follow literally EVERYTHING gaming and I've never seen drops from Youtube.
Fortnite has drops for watching streams. It seems very likely that Blizzard will enable drops on Hearthstone streams in the same way.
https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/youtube-drops
So, in short:
- No more drops.
- About 5 times as many commercials.
- 'personalized' commercials instead of generic commercials.
- Sound volume level of commercials 1.8x the stream itself.
Yeah, I'm not looking forward to YouTube for streaming.
Though, I don't really watch Hearthstone Esports anyway since its always the same nonsense every single match.
Seems like you really haven't watched any Hearthstone Esports since they cancelled specialist, Flux. Almost every character has been brought to the playoff last year, so your "every single match" statement is false.
This is going to be a huge cut in viewership. YouTube streaming alone was gonna kill a decent chunk of viewership, but this will be another huge hit. Sad to see