Although arguably not as much fun as playing, there are obviously plenty of ways to watch video games. In general these of course involve watching other gamer’s perform – and that might be in Esports contests or head to head competitions, watching demo’s and game-play recordings, or as simple as watching recorded videos of games.

Some of these options are free (but you’re subscribing or signing up to a service in order to watch them), others are free but there are options to get enhanced capabilities by paying a regular amount, and some involve a subscription full-stop in order to get involved at all.

So there are three main ways you can watch video games under a subscription :

• by simply watching video recordings of games, as we’ll run through on this page

• by signing up to watch on live streaming platforms like Twitch, Caffeine, Facebook Gaming

• by taking out a subscription with a specific Esports team

Here we’ll take a look at the options – what’s free and what’s not, who is allowed or able to watch, what you’ll need, and where to find the best services.

Watching Recorded Videos

Let’s begin with something simple that has an obvious place to start – plain watching videos of video games being played on Youtube.  You can of course watch videos on Youtube on any device and pretty much from any country in the world. 

There will be plenty here to see, and Youtube will be showing the most popular videos high up in the lists.

As a recommendation though, it’s probably the highly acclaimed channels and video creators that have good reputations that are the most worthy of spending your time viewing.

Probably one of the best of these is the LetsGameItOut channel. Described as a ” let’s play channel by some guy named Josh who makes fun-loving videos filled with joy and sarcasm” it has over 2 million subscribers.  

The example below is one of the most recent published and has quickly got close to 6 million views (as of Nov 2020)  and counting.

It’s clear then that Youtube is a perfect example of where you can watch videos for free, and as we’ve seen there are plenty of good gaming-related videos to fill your time. You can just go and watch anything you like, including live game streaming. 

However you can also subscribe to channels you like and get notified when new videos are posted, alongside many other forms of subscriptions.

The service is called Youtube Premium and costs $11.99 a month (or £9.99) and gets you videos without any ads, an option to continue playing videos or music “in the background” (meaning the audio will continue if you minimize the app), music and video downloads, and access to YouTube original movies and TV shows.

Youtube Alternatives

While Youtube is the most well known venue for videos, there are others that are worth a look. Vimeo is one and has a good library of video game videos, while Facebook Watch is another option. Each gives ways to subscribe to watch specific videos.