How to get your game image on YouTube

Why is no one talking about this

TL;DR

• Email youtubegamingdestination@google.com
• Images
  • 5:7 - 1000px by 1400px
  • 16:9 - 2560px by 1440px
• Give consent (use template below)

How to get your game on YouTube

When you are uploading games on YouTube or live streaming as a creator, you can choose the "Gaming" category and select which game you are playing. When you first start making your game you cant just go to YouTube and say "Here is my game, add it please." (unlike Twitch.tv where you can just add your game to IGDB.com and it gets added from there). YouTube will scrape the internet and add your game automatically in its own time. The one thing it doesnt appear to do very well is add the image to the category, leaving an ugly placeholder.

This might just be down to the fact that most of the sites that YouTube scrapes dont feature images with the correct aspect ratio, and if you could get the right size onto Steam or GoG or IGDB then it would get added automatically. But thankfully there is another way.

Just send an email

I have no idea why this isn't easier to find. I have searched through Google's documentation, Reddit and other places and found very few people talking about this. Luckily, our friend @PurpleMossCollector (working on Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers) trawled through the deep, dark underbelly of discord (or just a regular game dev server) and found the following.

To update the art on your game page, send an email to youtubegamingdestination@google.com with the following images for your games:

• poster art - 5:7 aspect ratio - 1000x1400px
• background or screenshot image - 16:9 - 2560x1440px

Images that are platform independent (no console logos, etc) are preferred. the resolutions provided are minimum suggestions, but it's best to follow the aspect ratio.

You also need the following snippet of text in the e-mail body:

Consent template

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.

Does it work?

Yes it does work!

@PurpleMossCollector did exactly that. He got a response from google within 24 hours and less than a day later his game page had been updated. 🎉