YouTube Gaming launches paid subscriptions and Android broadcasting

(credit: Google)

YouTube is closing one of the biggest gaps between its YouTube Gaming service and Twitch.tv: monetization options. Google's upstart game streaming service has just added paid subscriptions, called "sponsorships," to its feature lineup. Sponsorships let users in over 40 countries go ad-free by paying a monthly fee of $3.99 through Google Wallet to directly support their favorite streamers.

Like Twitch, subscribers get extra perks, namely "access to exclusive chat sessions" and a chat badge that denotes them as paying subscribers. Twitch only allows streamers to add paid subscriptions when they regularly see a certain amount of users, but YouTube Gaming has no plans to put viewership size restrictions on the subscription feature. The one catch is that subscriptions are currently limited to beta testers.

With Twitch, half of the subscription fee goes to Twitch and half goes to the content creator, but Google won't say what the split will be for YouTube Gaming. When asked, Google's representative would only say, "The majority of the Sponsorships split is given to the creator." That sounds like a better deal than what content creators get on Twitch, but it's odd that Google won't offer more details.