YouTube’s Playables, a no-download app for light games, is testing a multiplayer feature for select titles. The Playables multiplayer lets users play games in real time with others on the platform. The test kicks off with two games available on both desktop and mobile, “Ludo Club” and “Magic Tiles 3.” YouTube launched Playables to all users in May with more than 75 titles and announced this week that it plans to introduce more features and content in the future. Gaming is a “sizable” viewing market for YouTube, according to Statista, which says its most-subscribed game channels each average about 47 million monthly subscribers.

Playables leverage “the widespread popularity of social gaming while stoking newfound competition in the mobile gaming world,” MediaPost writes. Google announced the Playables multiplayer test this week in a support post.

“Gaming is an integral focus among YouTube creators, with gaming content garnering billions of hours of watch time in the app every year,” MediaPost reports. Those views consist mainly of an audience of users watching the live-streamed gaming of others via YouTube Gaming Live, which dates back to 2011.

Highlights and replays also garner views. In October 2023 the platform launched Go Live Together, which lets two people “co-stream” on a single viewing event, a feature aimed largely at gamers.

MediaPost says a multiplayer feature could result in “live gaming competitions, for example,” that might “stoke engagement around its original mini-game ecosystem” and would be a step toward building out an actual gaming infrastructure.

“Multiplayer functionality would make it possible for players to interact within gameplay, bringing to mind the massive popularity of social gaming platforms like Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft, which are used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide,” MediaPost posits.

Platforms “including Netflix, Meta, and more recently, LinkedIn, with its in-stream puzzle games” have added or experimented with in-app gaming to boost engagement, “but it remains to be seen whether people really care about these mini-games, with only a small percentage of users in these other platforms regularly coming back to them,” writes Social Media Today.