YouTube makes Play Button smaller and creators aren’t happy
Unsplash: @smoslemiX user Muaaz shared photos of new, smaller silver and gold Play Button plaques from YouTube, and creators on the platform aren’t happy with the apparent shrinkage.
Launched in 2012, YouTube’s creator rewards program offers different Play Buttons plaques for users that hit specific subscriber milestones on the site.
Users who hit 100k receive a silver plaque, while users with 1M subscribers receive a gold variant of the award. Creators all over the world have received the silver Play Button, and have spent the rest of their careers chasing after the matching gold one.
On August 22, 2024, X user Muaaz shared photos from someone who received their recently-earned plaques for a second channel and they are significantly smaller than their existing awards.
“YouTube resized the 100,000 and 1,000,000 Subscriber Play Buttons.. they’re way smaller now,” he said.
YouTube creators flocked to the comments to share their thoughts about the change, and many are not happy with it.
“What the f**k?! YouTube STOP!!! You have consistently made it worse and worse. These are some of the massive accomplishments we look forward to and the last 2 sets of changes to these playbuttons have been terrible!” one user commented.
Another said: “I know it might be stupid, but man I’m a bit crushed. To have this change happen the month my channel is going to hit a million is a little deflating.”
“This looks so bad. What made the Gold play button so valuable WAS its size. Now that they’ve essentially taken that away & they are just the same size now, there’s no essential need to target for it,” a third commented.
However, not everyone is upset about the change. Many expressed that the smaller size will be easier to display in their setups, while others are just happy to get an award.
This comes just days after Twitch revealed its Bleed Purple Statue, a physical award that will be sent to streamers who reach 5M, 50M, and 250M watch hours on the Amazon-owned platform.
Dexerto has reached out to YouTube for a comment.