YouTube Creator Awards
YouTube Creator Awards, commonly known as YouTube Play Buttons or YouTube Plaques, are a series of awards from the American video platform YouTube, that aim to recognize its most popular channels. They are based on a channel's subscriber count but are offered at the sole discretion of YouTube. Each channel is reviewed before an award is issued, to ensure that the channel follows the YouTube community guidelines. YouTube reserves the right to refuse to hand out a Creator Award, which it has done for channels featuring horror or extremist political content. Awards When a YouTube channel reaches a specific milestone and is deemed eligible for a YouTube Creator Reward, they are awarded a relatively flat trophy in a metal casing with a YouTube play button symbol. The trophies are of different sizes: each button and plaque gets progressively bigger with the channel's subscriber count. The Gold Creator Award was introduced at VidCon 2012, alongside the Silver Creator Award at VidCon 2013 and the Diamond Creator Award at VidCon 2015. The Creator Awards are made by the New York firm Society Awards. Prior to March 2021, YouTube featured three additional benefit levels. These are not eligible for Creator Rewards, but they