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Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

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Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#41

This whole industry of game streaming is operating in a gray zone. It's a matter of time before we see some big lawsuits against the streamer and streaming platforms which make a lot of money by publishing the whole content, without any royalties to game developers /publishers. For certain games. it doesn't spoil or ruin the fun factor for viewers, but some others it just removed the incentives to buy a copy of the g…

The most popular games on Twitch are not story driven though.

Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#42

This whole industry of game streaming is operating in a gray zone. It's a matter of time before we see some big lawsuits against the streamer and streaming platforms which make a lot of money by publishing the whole content, without any royalties to game developers /publishers. For certain games. it doesn't spoil or ruin the fun factor for viewers, but some others it just removed the incentives to buy a copy of the g…

If that does happen it will be unprecedented. Activision and Bungie, which own Destiny, frequently works with streamers to premiere new content and hold events and they are not alone. They seem to know that streamers are good for business.

Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#43

If you're interested in the backstory of Justin.tv (which became Twitch), StartUp has a two part podcast on it: https://gimletmedia.com/episode/almost-famous-season-3-episo... https://gimletmedia.com/episode/season-3-episode-2/

glad someone added this. the pod is pretty amazing to see to the persistence and struggle justin and co. went through. last five minutes of the second episode were best part

Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#44
post #35
post #34

Game developers don't have any option except to restrict public display of their games in some way. There are now plenty of people who enjoy watching but not playing games. Game developers need revenue for this firstly because they deserve it, having made the entertainment, but secondly because former players are now just watchers and not paying money, reducing revenue. My guess is that games developers will permit p…

I think it's funny that people downvote because they don't like what they read even if its true. Put yourself in the shoes of the game developer who puts everything on the line to develop a game that thousands of people watch but the developer gets no revenue for.

Thousands of people watch -> word of mouth marketing -> people who wouldn't have heard of the game now know it, and might buy it

No people watch -> nothing happens -> nothing happens

Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#46

This whole industry of game streaming is operating in a gray zone. It's a matter of time before we see some big lawsuits against the streamer and streaming platforms which make a lot of money by publishing the whole content, without any royalties to game developers /publishers. For certain games. it doesn't spoil or ruin the fun factor for viewers, but some others it just removed the incentives to buy a copy of the g…

The most popular games on Twitch are not story driven though.

That would make sense, because for a game to be popular it would have to have a consistent viewership; something you wouldn't have with a single playthrough story based game. I think that story based games are very popular in the short term when they come out, but then die off (because most streamers have played them before their audiences). I think OP's point is valid.

Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#47
post #34

Game developers don't have any option except to restrict public display of their games in some way. There are now plenty of people who enjoy watching but not playing games. Game developers need revenue for this firstly because they deserve it, having made the entertainment, but secondly because former players are now just watchers and not paying money, reducing revenue. My guess is that games developers will permit p…

> a restricted part of the game, like level one only,

Which kinds of games do you think constitute the vast vast majority of Twitch viewership? Because it's not the type of games which have a "level one".

https://www.twitch.tv/directory

Re: Twitch could be a $20B company within Amazon

#50

With all that growth opportunity, you'd think they could invest a little more in the engineering side. I mean, I like Twitch, but their platform is still a mess. Chat delay can be a minute or more, and the VOD situation still sucks (60 days? Seriously?). I mean, they're owned by the people who run AWS for crying out loud. They should be able to knock this out of the park. I thought YouTube Gaming was going to muscle…

Youtube's interface (both broadcasting and viewing) is terrible compared to Twitch for the kind of programming people watch on it, and the "community" on Youtube is infinitely worse in every way possible to boot.

That's not entirely true. On Youtube, you can instantly rewind the video like you do on a video where as on Twitch, you have to go to the videos section, wait for that section to be uploaded before rewinding. There's also 60 fps on Youtube which beats Twitch's 30 fps.
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