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Twitch to start selling video games this week

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Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#51
post #11
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget, Twitch bought Curse, a company known for catering to gamers: - the longtime Curse Client, effectively an addon manager that started for World of Warcraft but now supports games like Rift, Skyrim, Minecraft, Kerbal Space Program - CurseForge, the community site behind addon hosting and development - the recent "Curse Voice" VOIP and chat client that is a direct competitor to Discord, and which got subsum…

Steam has so much value add beyond just its storefront, which is still the biggest in gaming. The community features are the most important - being able to see who's playing what and more importantly, being able to join their server, is not possible (yet) with Curse/Twitch. A lot of the Curse stuff is honestly little value, and if we're keeping track, implemented in Steam already. Curse Voice = Steam's in-game calls…

I probably buy fewer things through Steam than I do Humble Bundle, GoG, etc., but do all my gaming through Steam anyway just for all the other things it provides, even aside from social things like friends-lists and server joining.

To name a few: cloud saves, steam workshop, big picture, and steam controller.

Even if I dropped all the social features in favor of some other platform, I'd still be launching all my games through steam for those features alone.

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#52
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…

I use Discord every day and I disagree with you. I will go wherever the communities I interact with go. If Twitch starts to incentive streamers to move their communities to Twitch Desktop, it is going to be difficult for Discord to do anything about it.

Of course, there are plenty of Discord servers not associated with specific streamers or related to Twitch. Those will be harder to touch but I don't think Twitch cares about them anyway.

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#53
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…

This is happening to Discord today:

http://gizmodo.com/discord-has-a-child-porn-problem-17936822...

To our knowledge, the only recourse users currently have is to disallow direct messaging

https://blog.discordapp.com/discord-safety-boost-2d592ea3b14...

By default, Discord allows any two people who share a server to direct message each other. Unfortunately, the baddies can use this behavior to send you stuff that you don’t want to see — everything from Harry Potter spoiler memes (Snape killed who!??) to much worse. To keep the baddies at bay, we’re adding Safe Direct Messaging.

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#54
post #52
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…

I use Discord every day and I disagree with you. I will go wherever the communities I interact with go. If Twitch starts to incentive streamers to move their communities to Twitch Desktop, it is going to be difficult for Discord to do anything about it. Of course, there are plenty of Discord servers not associated with specific streamers or related to Twitch. Those will be harder to touch but I don't think Twitch car…

You're not wrong, that would be the next best play Amazon could do.

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes a lot of sense. I don't really interact on twitch at all so those features of Discord are lost on me.

It's really popular with the Twitch community now , but Discord has been a solid alternative to Skype for a very long time. The twitch integration is relatively recent.

Twitch was the tipping point though. Their twitch advertising they started doing in late 2014 early 2015 was key to their rapid growth.

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#56
post #49
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord competes with Teamspeak, Mumble, Ventrilo, and Skype in the category of gaming voice chat, but it also offers an interface set up like Slack, which has gained popularity for topic-based persistent chat. It hits a sweet spot of good-enough voice & text chat that's cost-free, needs no configuration, is fully hosted with captive servers, uses decent codecs, supports inbound hyperlinks, has a slick UI, has offici…

Discord isn't about to replace TS/Mumble for your WoW raiding or large organized clans, but it spread like wildfire among my friends who play League of Legends or Dota 2, and other games with medium-small groups of players. The fact that you don't need to install or configure any client (or even have an account) to bring someone in is the biggest single thing. People come for the easy invites and stay for the (slight…

It _has_ replaced TS/Mumble for ffxiv, voice chat for subreddits, other game communities. WoW is bigger and has more inertia, but the network effects are strong.

I can see it pulling away from pretty much everything except those groups that have spent lots of time on crazy teamspeak setups with lots of ranks, different overlapping groups and so on.

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#57
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…

This has not been my experience. Mine experience has been seeing total fragmentation around chat apps for awhile with Skype, Teamspeak, Curse and Discord.

Now it seems most players I encounter have both Curse and Discord installed and will use the URL share feature that both have to share team invites for one or the other.

With them generally being used for gaming and now the acquisition and integrations happening between Twitch and Curse I suspect over time we will see Discord go the way of MySpace if they don't find someone to sell to and soon.

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#58
post #52
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…

I use Discord every day and I disagree with you. I will go wherever the communities I interact with go. If Twitch starts to incentive streamers to move their communities to Twitch Desktop, it is going to be difficult for Discord to do anything about it. Of course, there are plenty of Discord servers not associated with specific streamers or related to Twitch. Those will be harder to touch but I don't think Twitch car…

It also depends on how well Discord maintains it's reliability. Servers have been unavailable more often lately and there has been increased latency. Still perfectly acceptable here, but it seems to be a growing problem.

Re: Twitch to start selling video games this week

#60
post #11
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget, Twitch bought Curse, a company known for catering to gamers: - the longtime Curse Client, effectively an addon manager that started for World of Warcraft but now supports games like Rift, Skyrim, Minecraft, Kerbal Space Program - CurseForge, the community site behind addon hosting and development - the recent "Curse Voice" VOIP and chat client that is a direct competitor to Discord, and which got subsum…

Steam has so much value add beyond just its storefront, which is still the biggest in gaming. The community features are the most important - being able to see who's playing what and more importantly, being able to join their server, is not possible (yet) with Curse/Twitch. A lot of the Curse stuff is honestly little value, and if we're keeping track, implemented in Steam already. Curse Voice = Steam's in-game calls…

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