The Overwatch League moved over to the YouTube platform for OWL Season 3. Back in January, when they announced the deal, Activision Blizzard claimed that, “Together, [Google and Activision Blizzard] will usher in a new era of gaming experiences through Google Cloud as Activision Blizzard’s preferred cloud provider and YouTube as its exclusive live esports streaming destination.”
Their lofty claims, however, have not held up when it comes to the viewer experience. Many features on YouTube are comparable to those of Twitch, but YouTube also lacks key features that made Overwatch League better on Twitch.
Drops and guessing games
The Overwatch League worked with Twitch to introduce rewards for players who watched OWL content live. Players had the option to link their Battle.net accounts with their Twitch accounts to earn special currency for watching broadcasts.
Players could acquire the currency by watching broadcasts and playing guessing games which could be accessed in the Twitch client. The guessing games asked players multiple choice questions like “Who will deal the most damage” or “What tank will take gold objective time.” Although these questions were pretty basic, they still provided something fun to do while watching OWL games. If the viewer got the question right, they received a certain amount of the special currency.
The special currency could be used to buy OWL skins and the special season skins like Atlantic Mercy or most recently GOATS Brigitte.
You can still buy the currency to gain access to your favorite OWL in game skins, but without the drops, players can only access the currency by buying it. Presumably YouTube simply lacks the infrastructure to implement the drops or the special games which Blizzard partnered with Twitch to implement. It definitely takes away one of the cool aspects to Overwatch League games for me and I am sure that many other fans miss these features as well.
OWL Commissioner Pete Vlastelica promised they are looking for ways to implement a similar award system on YouTube, but they have yet to announce anything on that front.
Twitch Clipping
Twitch has this dope feature where you can clip the last minute or so of a live stream and have that clip published on the Twitch platform. Anyone can grab a clip, which makes it great for fans who want to grab a cool play and post it on Twitter. It’s also useful for journalists like me, who want to live Tweet games or include key plays in an article. The ability to post replays quickly and easily is powerful and fun for everyone.
The current YouTube live stream system doesn’t have any way to easily access the video until the stream ends and the VOD is uploaded. There is probably some sketchy way to clip YouTube live, but there is no official feature. This slows down the coverage pipeline and in the end means there is less live online hype for games, since it is harder to post replays. The Twitch clipping feature is an awesome feature and YouTube should implement it.
The All Access Pass
During Season 2 of the Overwatch League, there was a feature called the All Access Pass. This pass allowed viewers to watch OWL games from any players perspective. This was a great feature for people who were looking to learn a particular role, since they could watch along with some of the best players in the world. The feature was also great for anyone who is just a big fan of a particular player. The pass essentially allowed you to direct your own video stream. It was a revolutionary principle which was well executed and I miss the hell out of that feature.
To be fair to Activision Blizzard, they did add an OWL replay viewer to Battle.net, but that feature only works after the games have already been played. The absence of the all access pass is a major disadvantage of watching OWL on Youtube instead of Twitch.
I am sure that the Overwatch League and YouTube struck a very profitable deal for both companies. However, Overwatch League was objectively better on Twitch. It had more features, encouraged more meaningful engagement, and offered viewers a diverse set of ways to experience the Overwatch League through the all access pass. Although OWL might be looking into ways to bring back some of these features, for now Overwatch League on YouTube is just worse than it was on Twitch.
- Yes, definitely 74%, 23 votes23 votes 74%23 votes - 74% of all votes
- No, doesn't matter 26%, 8 votes8 votes 26%8 votes - 26% of all votes
I personally just can’t get used to watching livestreams on YouTube. Doubt that’ll change going forward. :/
i’ve liked watching it, but i think twitch was better honestly