How to get your game category on Twitch and YouTube.
You’ve no doubt seen Twitch streamers or YouTube video creators tag their content with a specific game and clicking on it brings you to all the other videos ever created for that title. But how do you get your game visible for them, so they can select it from an easy auto-complete field? We’ll tell you in this article!
- Skip ahead to Twitch Game Category creation
- Skip ahead to YouTube Game Category creation
- Skip ahead to Kick Game Category Creation
Before we dive into the how, let’s answer the important question: “Why?”
Why is having a category for your game important?
Discovery
If a lot of content creators play your game, it will appear in places like Twitch’s Recommended Games and you can immediately see how many streamers are live with the game at any given time. Depending on the game’s tags, it will get recommended to people who have watched streamers play similar games.
Visibility
There is a small risk some streamers will pick an incorrect, similarly titled game or have to pick a general tag like “just chatting” if they can’t correctly find your game’s title. They are probably familiar with the box art from your press kit or online stores, so it’s important to have the same one present on Twitch & YouTube. On that same note: the release date is very important too:
Data collection
Both Twitch and YouTube will keep a record of everyone who has ever played your game, making it easier for you to find their streams. Plenty of data collection sites also use your game category to track data like total hours watched, average view count and how many people total have played the game.
Pirate PR Tip: We recommend SullyGnome as an easy and free method to get Twitch statistics, but Lurkit is also amazing and even captures YouTube data as well.
Want to get alerts? It can be very useful to get a notification when someone goes live with your game on Twitch or when a new YouTube video has been uploaded. We recommend using Gameplainer for this, a discord bot you can configure as you want (also for Google RSS feeds, Reddit, Steam reviews, Metacritic reviews and more!) –> https://gameplainer.com
Now that we’ve established the why, let’s move on to how you can add your own game category to Twitch and YouTube, that’s what you’re here for after all!
1. How to create your Game Category on Twitch
This used to be a big hassle with Twitch getting your game’s info from GiantBomb, but luckily the process is a lot easier these days. Since the purchase of IGDB by Twitch/Amazon, you can simply enter your game’s data there and Twitch will pick it up after a few hours.
What do I need to do?
- Browse to igdb.com
- Log in with your Twitch account (it doesn’t have to be a company one)
- First, use the search to check if your game already exists (it should have been picked up automatically if it’s on digital stores like Steam) If it’s already there, you can update the existing one.
- If your game isn’t in their database yet, click on “Games > + Add Game” from the header.
- Fill in the wiki with all possible data. The most important fields for Twitch are:
- Title
- Release date per platform (put TBA or Q1/Q2/Q3/Q4 if you don’t want to specify)
- Cover image (3:4 ratio)
- Genres (this will be used on Twitch as tags)
- Obviously, you’ll also want to make sure this page is updated with info like your social links, your store links, who’s the developer/publisher and add a nice description, trailer and screenshots, but solely for Twitch’s discoverability, it’s not necessary (yet).
IMPORTANT: IGDB is a wiki-like community-driven database and anyone can make changes to any game, so be sure to check in sporadically to see if everything is still looking in order. + use the opportunity to update your key art and screenshots if needed!
2. How to create your Game Category on YouTube
It would be easier if YouTube would also use the info hosted on IGDB, but sadly this isn’t the case yet. They auto-generate your game’s category based on its presence in stores like Steam or having a Wikipedia page, but it can take a very long time for them to update this and the box art will often be missing. More info on how to CREATE a new category below!
To get the visuals updated, you’ll need to send an email. Yes. A good old-fashioned email.
Google/Youtube has asked us to not list the email address publicly so please CONTACT US HERE or drop us a line through TWITTER DM and we’ll send it through ASAP.
What do I need to do?
- Send an email to the YouTube gaming moderators (see above for their contact info)
- Subject: “Please update the YouTube category for <Game Title>”
- Include this text: “YouTube channel: {link_to_your_youtube_channel} – I acknowledge that the materials I am providing via email constitute Provider Content or Content per the terms of my entity’s agreement(s) with YouTube and/or Google as applicable”
- Include the link to your category too, in case there is a chance of confusion (similarly titled game exists)
- Include two images below as attachments
- a background image without the game’s title – 2560×1440
- a box-art with the title – 1000×1400
- You can use the ones below as a template: Right click > Save as
Now, I can already hear you think: what about all the other visible fields in the YouTube category for my game. Can I request changes to those? Sadly: No. We’ve reached out to the Google Admin team and this info is 100% auto-generated and can’t be updated even by them.
That’s really too bad, because a link to your own YouTube channel, other social media or even stores would be extremely useful to have visible here and could possibly bring some wishlists and sales in. I hope YouTube revises their stance on this at some point and allows for a more open system that developers can edit themselves.
But for now, you might want to keep reading:
HOW to CREATE a new game category or update the DESCRIPTION?
We’ve received confirmation from Google/YouTube themselves that they pull the description from Wikipedia. So if you want to have an up-to-date description of your game or get it created faster, make a Wikipedia page for it! If you wait for the stores like Steam to populate it, it can take up to three months.
Another shortcut is getting your Trailer featured on the IGN YouTube channel (if you need help with this, maybe consider sending a press release via Pirate PR *wink-wink*) But the most surefire way (and quickest) seems to be sending your info to IGN directly, which you can do by mailing [email protected] with the following info:
- Game Title
- Developer
- Publisher
- Genre(s)
- Platforms
- Release Date/Window
- Short Description (~2-3 sentences)
To be honest, this is a step you should take for every game you release regardless 😉
3. How to create your game category on KICK
There is a new player on the market, so we added the steps for KICK to our Treasure Trove article as well.
Sadly, KICK isn’t using a useful repository like IGDB yet (it’s their direct competition, after all) and that means you’ll have to send them a good old-fashioned email.
What do I need to do?
- Send an email to [email protected]
- Include the title of the category you want to update/create (your game’s title)
- And a 3:4 box art
- Mention the desired categories like “shooter” or “platformer”
- Include a short 1-2 sentence description of the game
- Hope they get back to you soon
If they don’t get back to you right away, you can try asking a few creators you know who’ve tried to stream your game on KICK, and reach out to them with the request to have the category created.
EDIT: They are VERY quick to respond, we got an answer within 5 minutes!
We hope that you’ve learned something new from this Treasure Trove post and if you did, please consider sharing it through any of the options below and help spread the knowledge.
