There were quite a few years there were Facebook just kept getting bigger and kept expanding with new features and apps. Ever since the rebrand to Meta, however, which many believe was to try and take the focus of Facebook’s increasingly tarnished reputation, the company has been shutting down apps regularly. Today we can report that the latest app to get the chop from Meta is Facebook Gaming. Here is what you need to know.
The announcement went out to Facebook Gaming users yesterday, telling them that the Facebook Gaming app would be shutting down on both Android and iOS apps from October 28. After that date, users will only be able to access the service from a Facebook Gaming tab on the regular Facebook app.
The good news then for both users and content creators on the platform that is Facebook’s version of Twitch and YouTube streaming is that the service is not being completely discontinued. However, there is no escaping the fact that this isn’t a positive message that Meta is sending out about the future of the service.
This latest cancellation follows Meta’s recent pulling of multiple Facebook apps including Facebook Podcasts and Facebook Live Shopping. The company has also halted the development of its planned digital wallet app called Novi and is reported to have stopped working on its rumored smartwatch. Maybe the rebrand just wasn’t powerful enough.
It is worth pointing out, however, that in the case of Facebook Gaming losing its own specialized app, YouTube did something similar back in 2019 and that YouTube Gaming has so far been able to rack up over 2.3 billion views already this year. This would indicate that the move could just simply be a consolidation by Meta as Facebook Gaming, although not as popular as YouTube Gaming, is not too far behind YouTube for views with about 1.4 billion views so far this year.
In the recent Facebook news, you should now have much greater control over what you see on your Facebook feed.
