YouTube Gaming has just won a massive victory in the streaming wars. In a statement, Activision Blizzard and Google announced that they had secured an agreement for the exclusive streaming rights to the Overwatch, Call of Duty and Hearthstone eSports Leagues.
In the press release, Google and Activision Blizzard described their contract as a “multi-year strategic relationship.” Outside of the YouTube Gaming exclusivity deal, Activision Blizzard would also transfer their game hosting services to Google Cloud. The two companies promised that players would be able to enjoy “curated recommendations for in-game offers” and low latency without sacrificing game fidelity. While Activision Blizzard’s Chief Information Officer Jacques Erasmus praised Google Cloud’s infrastructure, Google officials like YouTube Gaming head Ryan Wyatt and Google Cloud’s Gaming head Sunil Rayan also expressed their excitement to work with the game developer. The announcement concluded stating that this agreement would begin by streaming the Call of Duty league this week, and continue with the Overwatch League in February.
Although the two corporations seem enthusiastic about cooperating with each other, eSports enthusiasts are less receptive to the news. Several fans took to Twitter to express their discontent. One Twitter user said that they would “rather spend all of my money to go watch every single game live than watch [the Overwatch League] on YouTube Gaming,” while another expressed confusion about what would happen to the previously existing All-Access passes to the leagues and another older deal with ESPN and ABC to broadcast the Overwatch League.
Although fans are right to be skeptical of whether the partnership between Activision Blizzard and Google will work out, hopefully, the resulting impact on gaming and streaming as a whole will be positive. Allowing the eSports leagues to be streamed on YouTube Gaming will hopefully open up a whole new audience for Activision Blizzard and YouTube. In the worst-case scenario, Twitch users will always host unauthorized streams for diehard enthusiasts to enjoy.
Source: Activision Blizzard/Google
