YouTube Gaming to release membership gifting, similar to Twitch’s gifted subs model

YouTube Gaming users in Japan are going to see a new system being tested, and that is Membership Gifting. Only in its Alpha stage right now, the announcement came out earlier today, perhaps as a way to combat the continued success of Amazon-owned Twitch.

This will only be rolled out to a few channels at first, and it sounds like this highly-requested YouTube Gaming feature is finally coming to the streaming platform.

"New Membership Gift Alpha Edition. For creators using livestreaming and membership, this is a function that allows existing channel members to give membership rights to other viewers. Currently, this function is being tested on a small number of channels.”

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Memberships available on YouTube Gaming, but not like Twitch's Membership Gifting

Membership Gifting has been available on Twitch for years, and it’s something fans of YouTube Gaming would love to see. Unfortunately, this is only available in Japan for now, and it’s not very clear when, or if this will come to other regions.

The tweet from Japanese YouTube said that it will allow members of a channel to gift a membership to another viewer, but it is still being tested as of this moment. This Gifted Membership system is something that Vaklyrae hinted at back in September 2021, during a livestream.

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She said that YouTube is working on both a version of Twitch Prime and Gifted Memberships, but only mentioned it in passing. Now it’s officially being tested, at least, on a select few Japanese YouTube Gaming channels.

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Fans react to YouTube Gaming being tested

This quickly became a hot topic of discussion on Reddit, with many users weighing in on the announcement of Gifted Memberships being on the way. It turned out to be a very divisive discussion, ranging from positive to wildly negative.

One Redditor said that while making money comes first, they wished better mod support would have been revealed instead. Another user agreed on both of these points as well.

Another user’s point was that if YouTube wants to compete with Twitch, they need to counteract Twitch Prime. A reply said that YouTube can’t counter Amazon Prime’s two-day shipping, but could instead offer a free membership a month, and perhaps discounts on premium YouTube services.

Some users are simply finding the announcement lackluster, offering “Prime without Prime,” and then again, the benefit of Amazon’s shipping came up.

Though some wonder how it took so long, commenters remind them that the bigger the company, the longer features like this take, and YouTube/Google are a massive entity.

Not everyone hates it or is making fun of the system, though. Some, like fans of Dr Disrespect, are glad this is finally happening.

One of the major fears, when it comes to Japanese YouTube at least, is the idea of random gifting. The fear of an anti (troll, hater of a specific channel) is high. A pair of Redditors explained why this is a problem, at least in the Japanese community and Vtubers.

For now, it’s only being implemented on a select number of YouTube Gaming channels in Japan, and time will tell what feedback is given and how it is further introduced to other markets later on in 2022 or beyond. The system is only being tested for the time being.