Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is resigning

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 289 posts

Re: Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is resigning

#81

Post by jsheard »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #58
AccountAccount1 wrote: post #4

Honestly, it's not that surprising... from an outsider, Twitch has been incredibly mismanaged in the way that they treat their content creators. And now that Youtube is robust enough to allow streaming (also with the features that streaming has) it's catching up to them. The most curious is the alienation of creators which were raking up like 60k viewers per stream by the threat of banning. If you have ever seen one…

Way to gloss over those streamers you're mentioning were streaming gambling. Kick is a front for Stake the bitcoin casino, not a legitimate streaming site. It exists purely because Trainwrecks wanted to keep making money streaming bitcoin slots. It's been an utter shit show with people streaming porn, sex, the super bowl, incredible amounts of racism... Twitch absolutely is not going that direction with good reason.

Indeed, browsing Kick right now shows gambling is the biggest category by far with 42k viewers.

Chat streams are second with 6k viewers, and the most viewed (non-gambling) game has a mere 1.6k viewers.

I can't imagine why anyone would stream games on there unless they're banned from Twitch.

Re: Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is resigning

#82

Post by bluefirebrand »

duxup wrote: post #13
AccountAccount1 wrote: post #4

Honestly, it's not that surprising... from an outsider, Twitch has been incredibly mismanaged in the way that they treat their content creators. And now that Youtube is robust enough to allow streaming (also with the features that streaming has) it's catching up to them. The most curious is the alienation of creators which were raking up like 60k viewers per stream by the threat of banning. If you have ever seen one…

Is ANY platform in a position to treat creators well? I hear nothing but complaints from everywhere. I wonder if it is possible to treat creators well…? Are creators even worth much on average considering the volume of people willing to just grind out content continuously without much regard to … themselves? It seems to be an endless search for more subscribers, more views, more patrons of some type, more questionabl…

Maybe I missed it, but Wordpress seemed to handle creators really well.

I've been saying for a while that the next big thing in streaming is Wordpress but for Streamers.

Something relatively easy for small streamers to set up and manage on their own, cheap enough to start small and scale up as it starts to make money, with the ability to handle large-scale streams if necessary.

I don't know how you would handle provisioning the servers and such. Maybe it's not easy enough to automate. But I think this sort of thing would take a huge bite out of centralized streaming sites.

Re: Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is resigning

#83

Post by skilled »

I've been a Twitch user since its first year. I have a select few streamers I watch, and I spend more time on the platform when there are new releases for games I personally like. But, I have been very in-tune with Twitch culture and I know how disorganized it is when it comes to "big" streamers.

However, my issue (and also disappointment) with Twitch right now is:

- Softcore porn allowed on the platform. Literally, girls doing ass up squats in front of the camera for a $3 donation. You cannot avoid this because its part of the platforms "culture" and even your favorite streamers will one day end up watching a clip or something on their stream. This also breeds incels and very toxic chatters.

- Ads. Twitch is fighting against ad-blockers. Fine by me, I can bare ads, but what I cannot do is bear 5 ads in a row every 30 minutes. This has gotten a lot worse lately. It is annoying and disruptive to the user experience, and thankfully there are streamers who disable them altogether as they can sustain themselves through subscriptions and donations from chatters.

Is there hope Twitch will fix this? I doubt it. I see them as weak and irresponsible bunch that are only interested in money and don't care about mixing things up in the community.

Re: Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is resigning

#84

Post by kmnc »

One thing I have noticed with twitch is how stagnant viewership seems to be for most streamers. It seems like once you hit your peak in growth.... there is just nothing after that, no growth at all. Most streamers I watch have been on a slow decline in viewership and subs... Without "oilers" (people who gift a ton of subs or money) most streams would die completely. One main reason for this in my opinion is how terrible ads are on twitch. I watch a lot of GTA RP on twitch... and ads completely destroyed it from a viewer perspective. Steaming in general lends itself well to collaboration... but, when I want to check out a different stream and am met with 2 minutes of the most repetitive and annoying ads.. I quickly go back to my main streamer who I use my twitch prime on so I don't get ads.

I got so fed up with twitch ads that I actually use twitch turbo now.. which isn't marketed at all for whatever reason. My viewing experience is so much better now, and I am checking out a larger variety of streamers.

Ads on twitch are so horrendous that pretty much every streamer I watch apologize to their viewers about it.

Twitch's second failure is that it is so incredibly out of touch with what viewers want to see. Twitch run events are abysmal, yet they give no help or support to the creators who are actually making good events or shows. The fact that twitch didn't become a big player in e-sports is such a massive failure. Look at what happened with Chess... it exploded and is still in a pretty good position all because some smart people decided to run some actually entertaining events. Twitch could of easily dominated the e-sports market by partnering and helping the smaller tournament orgs... yet now those orgs are failing and the e-sports scene is once again cratering to the ground. If it wasn't for the surprise success of Valorant.. e-sports would be dead right now.

Re: Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is resigning

#85

Post by tempsy »

prox wrote: post #62
colpabar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for the first two, but as for the softcore porn bit - there are a lot of very popular streamers who are just hot women that wear bathing suits or less and either do something mundane while looking hot or "exercise" or something that is also mostly just them looking hot. Maybe softcore porn is a bit much since there is no nudity, but it's close.

It’s not even close to softcore porn. I can go to any beach and see the same thing, or a nudie sauna, and that is hardly sexual. Hot is probably the right word. Well done if they make money from that I guess.

softcore porn is "softcore" because it doesn't involve nudity or explicit intercourse

the fact wearing a bikini at the beach is not sexual does not mean streaming yourself wearing a bikini in a hot tub while making moaning noises is not softcore porn. the intention is what matters eg attract teenage simp boys.

Re: Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is resigning

#86

Post by com2kid »

0000000000100 wrote: post #48

If there was one thing I wish Twitch would change, it’s the entry ads to streams. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve closed the tab while browsing for something to watch because I get an unskipable 30 second ad before I even get to see if there’s something worth watching. For reference, Twitch has invested very heavily in anti adblockers and it’s pretty difficult to sidestep the ads these days without paying $5/mon…

I stopped using it when my Prime subscription no longer removed ads.

I was a very regular user, 2-4 hours a day, then boom, forced ads, and I never went back.

Re: Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is resigning

#87

Post by jedberg »

tempsy wrote: post #55
sleepybrett wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lost me at 'leftist extremism' imma need some examples.

[flagged]

> This is the event that still required everyone to wear a mask late 2022 only after Twitch was guilted into it.

Oh no, they bowed to people whose livelihoods depend on staying healthy and realized that masks actually do help when everyone wears them.

Re: Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is resigning

#88

Post by willio58 »

elicash wrote: post #16

Am I the only one who takes it at face value that somebody would quit being a CEO because of the birth of their first child? Even if the platform has all the issues folks are saying?

Nope, I totally agree. Most of the complaints I'm seeing are valid, but a lot of people see Twitch as a dying platform when in reality it's just getting bigger and bigger. There was a momentary huge spike in viewership during covid, but I believe viewership in total is still climbing.

Re: Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is resigning

#90

Post by stametseater »

wlesieutre wrote: post #12
AccountAccount1 wrote: post #4

Honestly, it's not that surprising... from an outsider, Twitch has been incredibly mismanaged in the way that they treat their content creators. And now that Youtube is robust enough to allow streaming (also with the features that streaming has) it's catching up to them. The most curious is the alienation of creators which were raking up like 60k viewers per stream by the threat of banning. If you have ever seen one…

Isn't youtube also incredibly mismanaged in the way that they treat their content creators? For example, making up new rules about swearing too close to the intro of videos being grounds for demonetization, and retroactively applying it to everyone's back catalog from before the rule existed?

Youtube was much better before it was monetized. With monetization came the same pressure on content that had already been present on commercial television; advertisers. Advertisers are the reason television content sucks, they are the ones who demand that the content be formulaic milquetoast crap, and television sucking was the reason Youtube got huge in the first place. Now youtube is becoming the new television.

Retroactive application of new standards? That's newish to youtube but standard for television. Old TV episodes that don't meet present advertiser standards don't get reruns.

Thankfully there are still some video creators on youtube who don't care about money and are doing it for other reasons (passion, hobby, etc.) But youtube has lost most of their incentive to promote that sort of unmonetized content, so it's becoming harder to find.

Post reply on HN