Meta closing down Facebook Gaming iOS app in October

The iOS app for Facebook Gaming will stop working on October 28, 2022, although the streaming service will remain live on the web.

Facebook Gaming is a game streamer service similar to Twitch, and it was launched in 2018. Near start of the COVID pandemic, in April 2020 the company launched an app for the service after it rode a wave of increasing popularity for two years.

It was successful enough to reap the benefits of Microsoft closing down Mixer. However, in a time where internet use as a whole is decreasing, Facebook has made the decision to close not just the iOS app, but the Android app as well.

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— Gothalion (@Gothalion) August 29, 2022

"We want to extend our heartfelt thanks to all of you for everything that you've done to build a thriving community for gamers and fans since this app first launched," Facebook said in a statement. "This was truly a community-led effort to bring new gaming features to Facebook."

The shut-down is not the first Twitch competitor that failed. As mentioned before, Microsoft closed Mixer in 2020, which was then subsumed into Facebook Gaming.

The shutdown is part of a recent shift away from viewing video game streams online. As The Verge noted on Tuesday, total hours watched decreased by 8 percent in the second quarter of 2022. Facebook's hours were at the bottom of the heap against competitors YouTube and Twitch, falling from 803 million hours to 580 million in the second quarter of 2022.

Facebook says the web-based version will remain live.

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5 Comments

emttim

said about 1 year ago

“However, in a time where internet use as a whole is decreasing…”
I did a search for this and found no reference to this. I’m interested in knowing more. Source?

genovelle

said about 1 year ago

emttim said:

“However, in a time where internet use as a whole is decreasing…”
I did a search for this and found no reference to this. I’m interested in knowing more. Source?

The link to the source is listed in the article

https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/30/23328568/facebook-gaming-mobile-app-shutting-down-october-2022

mpantone

said about 1 year ago

emttim said:

“However, in a time where internet use as a whole is decreasing…”
I did a search for this and found no reference to this. I’m interested in knowing more. Source?

It depends on what context and timeframes are being compared.

Recent surveys show that people are spending less time daily on their devices now that shelter-in-place orders have been lifted and people are leaving their houses to return to a greater variety of activities, including many that don't involve being on the Internet.

If you compare average Internet usage today from ten years ago, yes, the usage went up. But if you compare average Internet usage today versus a year ago, the usage went down.

Gaming focused services like Steam have metrics that show how many people are playing on their platform, which titles, purchases, downloads, concurrent players, etc.

Of course a company like Meta will know how much time is being spent using their services (Facebook, Instagram, Oculus Quest 2, etc.). That's what they do: track your activity so they can sell it to advertisers.

For Meta, it's not just how much time is being spent on their platforms but what percentage of total device usage is being spent on Meta platforms. If total Internet usage drops 10% but Meta platform usage drops 20%, that's a big problem for Meta. That means that people are spending more time elsewhere (YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, Discord, whatever) and Meta has lost marketshare.

If you look at hourly or daily graphs, you'd see peaks and valleys in the usage curves. The heaviest traffic days for app stores are December 25th and 26th in countries that observe the Christmas holiday because people are downloading new software for the gifts they've just received.

In a similar way there's heavy telephone traffic on New Year's Day and it's harder to get a restaurant reservation for Valentine's Day dinner or Mother's Day brunch.

From an app activity tracking standpoint, it's probably easier for Meta programmers to have fewer data sources (various Meta apps) versus one app that tracks everything you do with their platform.

FileMakerFeller

said about 1 year ago

genovelle said:

emttim said:

“However, in a time where internet use as a whole is decreasing…”
I did a search for this and found no reference to this. I’m interested in knowing more. Source?

The link to the source is listed in the article

https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/30/23328568/facebook-gaming-mobile-app-shutting-down-october-2022

From the linked article:

Although Facebook Gaming rose in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of hours watched on the platform (and other services) has started to taper off. Data from Streamlabs shows that hours watched across Facebook Gaming, Twitch, and YouTube Gaming fell 8.4 percent in the second quarter of 2022. Facebook Gaming had the least number of hours watched among the three in both the first and second quarters of this year, with 803 million in Q1 and 580 million in Q2.

That wording relates to videos being watched, not "internet use as a whole" - sloppy writing by AI.