Facebook launching new Gaming Tab
Update will make all gaming content accessible from main navigation, serve as new hub for streaming
Today, Facebook has announced the initial launch of a new hub for gaming on its platform in the form of the Facebook Gaming tab.
The Facebook Gaming tab represents a largely structural adjustment to Facebook's existing offerings for gaming by putting all gaming-related content under one tab accessible from the platform's main navigation bar. This includes playable Instant Games, gaming Groups, videos, and livestreams.
The new hub builds off of the fb.gg destination that Facebook announced last year which sought to unify gaming content on the platform to avoid users having to hunt down streamers or posts in their News Feeds.
It also serves as a continuation of Facebook's rapid acceleration to prioritize gaming content and streaming on its platform over the last year. In March of 2018, the company brought its Instant Games platform out of beta, allowing any developer to create games on it. In-app purchases came a few months later.
And alongside its June fb.gg announcement, Facebook also kicked off its Level Up program for streamers, allowing them to earn money from viewers during streams.
The Facebook Gaming tab will initially be rolled out to a small subset of Facebook users and will gradually be brought to the remainder of the platform's audience of over 700 million monthly active users. A standalone Facebook Gaming app is currently in beta test on Android.