Bottom line: YouTube Gaming will be discontinued on May 30 and users of the app have been asked by the company to move to the regular YouTube app. The gaming portal was launched back in 2015 as a rival to Amazon's Twitch but couldn't reach its levels of player engagement.
In September last year, YouTube sealed the fate of it's gaming-specific site and announced that its standalone app for live streaming games would shutdown by Spring 2019. The service was meant to discontinue in March or April but for unknown reasons, the closure was delayed until the end of this month, after which its mobile apps and website will stop functioning.
"The YouTube Gaming app will go away on May 30, but you'll be able to find all of your favorite gaming videos in the YouTube main app at www.youtube.com/gaming. Learn more about Gaming on YouTube here," the company wrote on its support page. "We want to continue to build a stronger home for the gaming community that thrives on YouTube, not just the YouTube Gaming app. After May 2019, we'll retire the YouTube Gaming app and focus our gaming efforts across YouTube."
Many features developed for the Twitch rival, including the dark mode, eventually made their way to the main YouTube site, and according to the company, most users still preferred watching gaming videos on the main app instead of the standalone YouTube Gaming app. An identity crisis and the ever growing popularity of Twitch meant this effort never gained much traction with the gaming community.
YouTube Gaming is another discontinued project by Google that's well known for shutting down many services over the years. There's even an unofficial cemetery of all its axed projects, including Google Allo, which was discontinued earlier this year. With YouTube Gaming now gone, many users are going to remain skeptical of Google Stadia, another gaming focused venture by the company that is set to launch later this year.