How Facebook plans to make esports and game videos more social

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
April 29, 2017
Updated June 20, 2025
12 min

At its recent F8 annual developer event in San Jose, California, Facebook doubled down on its gaming initiatives, announcing the progress it has made with Instant Games, Gameroom, and Gaming Video. That’s all part of its vision to become the place where people play, watch, and share games.

The numbers it shared show that Facebook remains a massive platform for gamers. It said that gamers had played Instant Games 1.5 billion times in the past 90 days, and that there are now more than 800 million people playing games on Facebook or playing while logged into Facebook, up 23 percent from 650 million a year ago.

Unlock premium content and VIP community perks with GB M A X! Join now to enjoy our free and premium perks.

Join now →

Sign in to your account.

Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.