Facebook Gaming tournaments is a new feature to bring people together and help them play virtually – offering formats for every level of player.
Most people think of Twitch or YouTube as the to-go platforms for gaming and live-streaming. However, gaming on Facebook has experienced huge growth in the last years. Hours watched on the platform have tripled, and hours streamed have doubled.
Now, Facebook is opening early access to Facebook Gaming tournaments, “a feature to help people stay connected through games.” Gaming promotes friendly competition, and Facebook says tournaments will “help bring that experience to everyone wherever they are, whatever game they’re playing.”
Facebook says it’s building the feature “as a one-stop shop for everything critically important for tournament organizers” bringing “better discovery and functionality for tournament participants”, and offering “developers and communities an easy way to connect.”
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Thus, the new feature is meant to bring more people together, letting users create and organize virtual tournaments in a variety of formats – single elimination, double elimination, and round-robin. Facebook says it plans on supporting the Swiss format, but will also be keeping an eye out for other formats that gamers want.
It caters to the needs of every kind of player, from casual to high-level esports play.
Because tournaments is built directly within the Facebook Gaming platform, Creators can host them and live-stream them as well. The feature also gives access to Facebook’s fundraising tools so teams can support relief organizations and get donations while streaming.
Tournaments are supported on iOS and Android Facebook apps, as well as desktop/web browsers.
Using a Facebook profile will allow access features such as bracket/notifications.
Facebook Gaming is currently debuting tournaments early access.