• by Colin Kirkland , May 28, 2024

After launching to paying subscribers last November, Playables -- YouTube’s “app store” of free, “lightweight, entertaining” games -- is now rolling out to all users on the Google-owned video-sharing platform, bolstering new competition in the mobile gaming world.

Users can now head directly to YouTube’s home page, either on desktop or the iOS and Android app, to find Playables in the Explore menu.

The company has released over 75 individual titles, including “Angry Birds Showdown,” “Words of Wonders,” “Cut the Rope,” “Tomb of the Mask,” and “Trivia Crack” that users can play and share with friends.

Other offerings include older games like Stack Bounce, which premiered on Google's original HTML minigames service, GameSnacks.

Players will be able to save their game progress as they go, tracking their best scores.

A smaller selection of Playables games originally launched to subscribers last year during a tumultuous period in the gaming market, with ByteDance announcing a mass layoff to restructure Nuverse, its gaming division, and Amazon cutting 130 jobs in its free games unit.

But competition in the free-games and mobile games industry is growing. Meta has made it easier for game developers to publish beta versions of their Instant Games directly to Facebook without review, Netflix is gaining traction with its gaming business, LinkedIn released its first three games on mobile and desktop, and Sony is developing an online store for mobile Playstation games.

Playables may add to the competition, with the possibility of cutting into the App Store’s free games offerings, which generate revenue for Apple via ads. YouTube may be preparing to facilitate additional cash flow via new ad placement opportunities while also retaining engagement of its 2.5 billion users between watching and sharing videos.

YouTube says the games on Playables should become available to everyone within the coming weeks.