UPDATED 12:27 EDT / MAY 06 2016

NEWS

Nearly half of YouTube’s top 10 trending games aren’t even out yet

This week, YouTube revealed its list for the top 10 trending games on the video site for the month of April, and surprisingly, four of those games have not even been released yet.

So how did unreleased games end up on top of some of the most-watched games on YouTube? It turns out, all four games made it into the top 10 thanks to their beta tests.

Here’s the full list of games on YouTube’s trending list:

  1. Dark Souls III
  2. Quantum Break
  3. Enter the Gungeon
  4. MLB The Show 16
  5. Ratchet & Clank
  6. Gears of War 4 (unreleased)
  7. Doom (unreleased)
  8. Overwatch (unreleased)
  9. The Sims 2
  10. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst (unreleased)

Most of these games were trending thanks to their closed betas, which meant that for most gamers, watching players who were actually in those betas was the only way they could see what the game was like. In the Overwatch community, this led to a running joke that fans who were not in the beta were playing “Onlywatch.”

In addition to its beta, Overwatch also had the benefit of its animated shorts, each of which pulled in well over 2 million views by themselves.

YouTube’s stats show that beta tests have more uses than simply ironing out a few gameplay issues. They can also be incredible marketing tools, building hype for a game in the months leading up to launch.

Image courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment Inc

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