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Twitch is acquiring popular video game community and software maker Curse

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Re: Twitch is acquiring popular video game community and software maker Curse

#101

Post by MisterBastahrd »

tantalor wrote: post #56
iherbig wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't pay to watch, they pay to support the streamer. Most streamers have subscriber/donation/cheer notifications appear on-screen in some way. Making partner on Twitch (which enables subscriptions) requires the streamer to have a consistent number of viewers each time they stream, and they must stream fairly often. It's not uncommon to see streamers with a fairly sizeable number of subscribers any given month.

Alright, I understand that. You suggest it's an ethical decision rather than economic; that streamers deserve the support. But why? I fund a few YouTubers on patreon, because they create content in the traditional sense, e.g., research, writing, filming, editing, etc. That's hard work. Streamers don't do any of that; they literally sit in their basement and play video games all day. Why do they need support? Sure, wa…

People find value in watching them play. You don't. So don't pay them. If they get paid, they get paid. A guy living in a cabin in the woods isn't likely to find what you do to be worth a dime either. Doesn't mean there aren't services he'd pay for.

Re: Twitch is acquiring popular video game community and software maker Curse

#102

Post by Blackthorn »

selckin wrote: post #81
icu wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I have been a loyal user of Curse for years but when they released their app I didn't see the value and didn't want to install an attack vector on my pc. I still go to Curse, sometimes several times a week but definitely it has become a worse experience over the years. As for Discord... my guild leader switched our raid team from Teamspeak and there was some acrimony because a guild member refused to install…

What has curse done to cause this amount of distrust? (I assume you don't do this for every application you install)

With Curse as a company, the bad times began when they started consolidating independent sites into "Gamepedia".

Re: Twitch is acquiring popular video game community and software maker Curse

#103

Post by gduplessy »

mbesto wrote: post #31
mc42 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full Disclosure: I really like Discord, and use Twitch daily. Discord has more easily manageable chat roles, eg: Moderator, Helper, Regular, Supporter, etc. Twitch chat is nothing more than simple IRC, and relies almost entirely on bots for the more complicated stuff. Discord also has voice chat built in, whereas Twitch has none for their chatters. Discord also has a better documented API and libraries in a lot of la…

Discord is also arguably a better implementation for team chat than Slack. Being able to jump in a room and have audio session out of the box alone is huge advantage compared to Slack.

I'm pretty sure that's a feature in slack, used it just yesterday actually

Re: Twitch is acquiring popular video game community and software maker Curse

#104

Post by amadeus »

imtringued wrote: post #85
jamie_ca wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"despite being an electron app", I'm way happier using Discord than I am using either Hipchat or Skype. Discord is a really well-put-together app, has text and voice chat that do their jobs, and get out of the way. The only complaint I have is that there's little to no support for searching history, but for an app focusing on live "community" chats, that seems a reasonable compromise.

I don't like browser based desktop apps. They have all the disadvantages of native apps but lose most advantages of HTML5 apps by being platform specific (apparently these is no discord desktop for linux) and require you to download an entire browser engine along with your app. You have to install them as opposed to just visiting an URL. They are not as lightweight as conventional desktop applications and don't perfo…

Disclosure: I'm a Discord developer.

Discord works in a browser or with the native apps. Just visit the website and click 'Open Discord in your browser'

Re: Twitch is acquiring popular video game community and software maker Curse

#105

Post by elmigranto »

Svenskunganka wrote: post #91
elmigranto wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not that sure about Valve. What they actually have for hats now is a system that withdrawals short of casino — you can't buy the thing you want, instead, you buy a "crate" that may (randomly) contain it, or other item. My thinking is that hats aren't that profitable without these kinds of tricks, and Steam effectively sponsored everything that happened at Valve before they implemented "gambling".

I get where you're coming from, but this is definitely not the case. Valve recently banned all gambling sites from using their APIs, so they're all shut down by now. And if you refer to crates of random items as gambling, they've also filled in that gap with the Steam Marketplace where you can buy individual items for market-dictated prices from other Steam users, where Valve takes a portion of the money the items ar…

My point is that what Valve does with in-game items is similar to what certain mobile games do with time/pay-walls and how casinos exploit certain aspects of our psychology. And if you do not practice this "shady stuff", it is not that profitable…

# Crates

Crates or doubling, tripling, etc. item's cost. Say I want a certain hat, on average, I'll need to pay multiple times (crate contains 5 other items, but successive crates do not yield duplicates in most recent Dota 2 versions, so worst case you pay 6 times a price).

# Steam Marketplace

Adds at least 30% to item's cost, since you buy with real-world dollars, but sell for "Valve Dollars" (only usable in Steam, no withdrawals), this is effectively paying more for a single item (at least 30% more expensive which is Valve's margin for Steam purchases of non-Valve titles).

In addition, Valve makes purchases non-tradable via Marketplace for a period of time (multiple months, usually) since original purchases for "preventing fraud". I see it as "incentivising gambling with crates", though.

# Third-party site

These were probably shut down because they involved real money, so Vavle could be potentially helping organise casino/bookmaking businesses from legal standpoint. It's all fine with Steam Money from marketplace.

So, yes, it is extremely profitable, probably orders of magnitude more profitable than "honest" selling where transaction is "pay money, receive item".

# Regarding TI

It is incredible how much money it made. It is as incredible as how Valve decided to split matchmaking pool for months with International Ranked to boost prize pool, so you had to pay $10 to go into faster queue.

Re: Twitch is acquiring popular video game community and software maker Curse

#106

Post by Senji »

jamra wrote: post #44
oldmanjay wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand upon the "failing" nature of these companies? On first sniff, I'm catching the same scent that rises from the last several decades of people proclaiming Microsoft is on the way out.

Twitch won the war of becoming the go to video game streaming app, but didn't do so by being a great innovator. It just got there first and now is a monopoly due to it having all the audience. Discord is clearly a passionate endeavor made by gamers. They may have a way of really changing the video game streaming business if they would be willing.

Requiring flash for streaming in this day and age is unforgivable.
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