More mini-games no one asked for

YouTube, like other tech products, continue to try to give what the people truly ask for from a video streaming platform: multi-player games.

Wait, what?

Yes, it's true, YouTube has games. They've had games for about a year now, experimenting with puzzles, trivia, and action games.

The purpose? Artificially inflate Grow user engagement, of course.

YouTube has over 130 games and is now introducing a new set of 'Playables': multi-player games.

• Ludo Club, a strategic board game.

• Magic Tiles 3, an addictive music-playing game similar to Guitar Hero (without the guitar)

YouTube's now alone on this quest

Over the past year or so, other tech products have launched games in an attempt to retain the attention of their users.

• LinkedIn started launching games in May. First, it was a few puzzle games. Now, there's a full fleet of addictive games which people actually find kinda fun.

• Netflix also attempted to enter the game realm, unfortunately with much less success. In November this year, they scrapped all but four of their games. They are still planning to release a Squid Game battle royale game in mid-December, in line with the launch of season 2 of the series.

Are these games generating any profits or improving any valuable metrics for these products? It's hard to say, although Netflix is a clear example of this approach not working so far.