Courtesy of Facebook’s aggressive strategies and spirit to take the digital world to the next level, the ecosystem has been abuzz with activity over the past week; be it the recent decision to rename the brand to “Meta” and make the platform more immersive or the introduction of nifty gaming-friendly features or the latest benchmark where the viewership of gaming on their platform surpassed that of YouTube according to Streamlabs, which published its Q3 2021 Live Streaming Industry Report on Wednesday.

As a result of Facebook’s increasing interest in the gaming sector, viewers watched 1.29 billion hours of content on Facebook Gaming between August and September, reflecting a 9.2 percent jump from the previous quarter according to the report.

Being the third-largest market, India alone clocked 234 million game sessions on Facebook in the two month period during July and August 2021. The social media giant has not only introduced a ton of features to facilitate various tiers of India with localised content but also tied up with gaming video creators and game publishers to give a leg up to its game streaming service.

Sagar Nair, Co-Founder & CEO of Qlan The Gamer’s Social Network shares that Facebook’s increased focus on Indian Gaming Market has the potential to help the Indian esports ecosystem grow drastically.

“With these initiatives, Facebook might be able to affect how people view gaming as a whole and give them more reasons than just playing games for fun! Facebook provides the ability for gaming streamers to be able to leverage all the tools and approaches that they have, and help them monetize the streams and efforts that they put into the gaming content they create,” he adds.

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Reflecting on facebook’s recent press event where various announcements were made with regards to the Indian gaming sector, he shares, “This is good news for the Esports ecosystem because it will allow them to expand even further and faster than before and with better precision. Facebook already enjoys a massive user base in our country and this will further help to expand its footprint in rural India which is still an untapped market for gaming. The people can easily share their content and virality factors will be bringing their grassroots efforts one step closer towards success.”

Shivam Rao, Co-Founder & COO of Trinity Gaming, India’s top gaming talent management company informs that their firm is also a Creator Service Provider (CSP) for Facebook and is responsible for the Facebook Gaming Partner Program in the Indian Region. 

He says, “The creators now earn money through ads and on-demand content that they will promote during a live stream on the Facebook Gaming Platform. By breaking gender and language barriers, the platform promotes regional languages and female creators extensively.”

Speaking about the myriad features that Facebook has introduced to facilitate the gaming sector, he opines, “On Facebook, creators can upload pre-edited videos and monetise their content through collecting Stars. Those creators who sign up for the Level Up program can access Facebook Stars as well as fan subscriptions. Meanwhile, partnered gaming creators have access to live ads. Facebook’s aggressive moves into the gaming space, especially in India, shows there is immense room for growth in live video game broadcasts.”

Tarun Gupta, Founder of Ultimate Battle (an online esports platform) acknowledged that Facebook has indeed become one of the best streaming platforms for content creators to go live and build a community.

He opines that Facebook Gaming’s incorporation within the Facebook app gives it a possible advantage to expand its roots owing to its strong user base. “The presence of Facebook gaming can now be seen in many Esports tournaments as streaming and or media rights partners which adds to the Esports ecosystem,” he notes.

With Facebook or Meta (Its new name) making inroads into the Indian gaming market with some of the hottest features which may soon include immersive elements, esports community in India is poised to set newer benchmarks in the years to come.