Twitch to start selling video games this week • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#21

Post by gameshot911 » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 7:34 PM UTC

OSButler wrote: post #18

Especially on consoles, there are a lot of platform specific exclusive in-game items/missions/cosmetics/... and I'm wondering if this starts to become more common for the different PC release platforms as well. Twitch Prime provides some exclusive in-game items and steam has had exclusive cosmetics in the past as well already, so while having multiple venues to purchase your PC games from is always good for the marke…

The freebies tend to be purely cosmetic, which I think is perfectly reasonable.

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#22

Post by goeric » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 7:40 PM UTC

niftich wrote: post #19

goeric wrote: post #13

Discord is going to be very hard to touch, even for Amazon. They should buy them as soon as possible. I know they bought Curse to try and break in, but it's just not going to be enough. Discord already has insane market-share in the community/VOIP area and there's not much even Amazon could do better that would get people to switch at this point. Really great software that consolidated people from IRC, Ventrilo, Mumb…

Amazon doesn't need to buy Discord because Curse/Twitch has close-enough feature parity and if they successfully get enough people to install Twitch Desktop for some reason (there are reasons more than just chat, like streaming), some portion of people will switch or run them concurrently. They don't need to hurry, they can siphon marketshare from Discord passively instead of actively. On the other hand, this move ma…

I disagree on the former, they absolutely need to hurry. But you're right, definitely an attractive acquisition target. I would say it would be a great fit for Microsoft.

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#23

Post by david-cako » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 7:41 PM UTC

KineticLensman wrote: post #16

The article doesn't mention it, but I guess this is related to Amazon's new Lumberyard game engine [1], a "free AAA game" that is deeply integrated with twitch. The Lumberyard FAQ explicitly says "Lumberyard is free, including source. We make money when you use other AWS services", presumably Amazon GameLift [1] https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/

wtf is "free full source"? seems very weasel word-y.

I've heard "shared source", I've heard "available source", but never this.

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#24

Post by detaro » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 7:45 PM UTC

david-cako wrote: post #23

KineticLensman wrote: post #16

The article doesn't mention it, but I guess this is related to Amazon's new Lumberyard game engine [1], a "free AAA game" that is deeply integrated with twitch. The Lumberyard FAQ explicitly says "Lumberyard is free, including source. We make money when you use other AWS services", presumably Amazon GameLift [1] https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/

wtf is "free full source"? seems very weasel word-y. I've heard "shared source", I've heard "available source", but never this.

You get the full source to the engine, under a restricted license (roughly: you can make a game with it, modify it in the process and distribute binaries of the game, everything else is forbidden, you are not allowed to use it with services that are in competition with Amazons cloud offerings)

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#25

Post by pubby » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 7:45 PM UTC

niftich wrote: post #19

goeric wrote: post #13

Discord is going to be very hard to touch, even for Amazon. They should buy them as soon as possible. I know they bought Curse to try and break in, but it's just not going to be enough. Discord already has insane market-share in the community/VOIP area and there's not much even Amazon could do better that would get people to switch at this point. Really great software that consolidated people from IRC, Ventrilo, Mumb…

Amazon doesn't need to buy Discord because Curse/Twitch has close-enough feature parity and if they successfully get enough people to install Twitch Desktop for some reason (there are reasons more than just chat, like streaming), some portion of people will switch or run them concurrently. They don't need to hurry, they can siphon marketshare from Discord passively instead of actively. On the other hand, this move ma…

Ah yes, the Google+ strategy.

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#26

Post by david-cako » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 7:48 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #24

david-cako wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wtf is "free full source"? seems very weasel word-y. I've heard "shared source", I've heard "available source", but never this.

You get the full source to the engine, under a restricted license (roughly: you can make a game with it, modify it in the process and distribute binaries of the game, everything else is forbidden, you are not allowed to use it with services that are in competition with Amazons cloud offerings)

It seems to be free and with no application process though, right?

So anyone can download it, but you can't modify and redistribute it?

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#27

Post by detaro » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 7:54 PM UTC

david-cako wrote: post #26

detaro wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get the full source to the engine, under a restricted license (roughly: you can make a game with it, modify it in the process and distribute binaries of the game, everything else is forbidden, you are not allowed to use it with services that are in competition with Amazons cloud offerings)

It seems to be free and with no application process though, right? So anyone can download it, but you can't modify and redistribute it?

More or less. You are supposed to use it to make games that use Amazon infrastructure so Amazon can make money of that, but you could make one that doesn't for totally free as well.

(Of course their non-legal texts don't mention the "don't use Amazon competitors" clause all that explicitly, only explaining that yes, you can use it without online features or software running on hardware you own)

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#28

Post by chipperyman573 » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 7:57 PM UTC

huac wrote: post #15

mtgx wrote: post #7

Time for YouTube to partner-up with Steam and allow Steam affiliate links and/or buy buttons, before it's too late and all the major gaming streamers on YouTube move to Twitch? Speaking of monetization models, YouTube is also leaving a lot of money on the table, or will soon enough, when it comes to podcasters that right now are forced to use subscription services such as Patreon to fund their channels. Why doesn't Y…

Twitch has monthly 'subscriptions' for popular streamers (roughly 300-500+ concurrent viewers, from what I've heard), at $5/mo, and Twitch takes some portion of that. They are pretty good at monetizing.

Twitch takes $2.50 of that unless you are a big streamer (I don't know what the cutoff is), then they only take $1.50.

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#29

Post by david-cako » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 8:00 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #27

david-cako wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be free and with no application process though, right? So anyone can download it, but you can't modify and redistribute it?

More or less. You are supposed to use it to make games that use Amazon infrastructure so Amazon can make money of that, but you could make one that doesn't for totally free as well. (Of course their non-legal texts don't mention the "don't use Amazon competitors" clause all that explicitly, only explaining that yes, you can use it without online features or software running on hardware you own)

Ah, so this makes perfect sense. The parent comment is the most relevant one here, considering that amazon is banking on tons of (amazon only!!!) value being added to their distribution system with this engine. Kind of the same play they made (and failed with) with the Amazon App Market.

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#30

Post by shuntress » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 8:12 PM UTC

goeric wrote: post #13

Discord is going to be very hard to touch, even for Amazon. They should buy them as soon as possible. I know they bought Curse to try and break in, but it's just not going to be enough. Discord already has insane market-share in the community/VOIP area and there's not much even Amazon could do better that would get people to switch at this point. Really great software that consolidated people from IRC, Ventrilo, Mumb…

Slightly off topic but regarding Discord being "hard to touch" I feel like I must be missing something.

My friends and I just switched from Mumble to Discord and I find Discord to be inferior in almost all regards.

Discord's browser client is cool and convenient. The separate text/voice channels (as opposed to Mumble's 1 text channel per voice channel) fits our typical use case very well (people playing different games in different voice channels but sharing links/images/unrelated messages in text).

How has discord become so (apparently) big so fast? Is it just marketing money and slick UI design pushing it beyond its means?