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YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion?

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41–50 of 245 posts

Re: YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion?

#41
post #12

That’s sad. Less competition, worse both for those watching and making content. Makers of (gaming-related) content for YouTube – worried about the future of YouTube – have often already been relying on Twitch to provide them some stability, to stand on more than one leg. This competition also insured that YouTube couldn’t do literally anything. Makers of content had a place to go if things didn’t work out. This is a…

Don't forget Kamcord, the other player in this space (and another YC company). Twitch isn't everything.

I'm an avid gamer and this is the first time I've heard about Kamcord, so that's must mean something.

Re: YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion?

#42

> Reps for YouTube and Twitch declined to comment. Yeah. I call this just a rumor.

Declining to comment literally doesn't mean anything. They are not saying yes OR no, possibly because as a big company you need to weigh up various effects of making public statements that might seem trivial to the lay-person.

Re: YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion?

#43

Compared to recent other aquisitions, 1 billion somehow seems like a bargain. Twitch has clear potential to play an important role in the future in TV and entertainment. Compare that to i.e. Snapchat...

How much of a bargain does the original Google acquisition of YouTube, for $1.65 billion, seem today? Less than one tenth of what Facebook are paying for WhatsApp!

Re: YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion?

#44
post #18

This is disappointing. YouTube's 'community' is extremely toxic, I can imagine if Twitch is rolled into it, it'll die a long, slow death.

Twitch community is also pretty toxic. Most of the time the biggest streamers put their chats in sub mode (paying supporters) to avoid it.

Recently I noted an anecdotal improvement: more gamers seem to be saying that a winning player "shit on" another player instead of saying they "raped" them.

Re: YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion?

#45
post #6

It's worth noting that Twitch partially became popular because it wasn't YouTube , and gamers could stream without content restrictions (e.g. copyright and region) Miraculously, this could end up making YouTube comments even worse .

While I do see this being an excellent acquisition for YouTube if true, I do agree. I don't see how YouTube could reconcile it's copyright stance with how Twitch fundamentally works.

It also doesn't fit their app store policy at all, particularly in light of the recent takedowns aimed at guides or utilities for PC games in absence of any copyright claims.

Re: YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion?

#46
post #20
post #9

If they do acquire Twitch I hope that they still let it run separately and just improve the back end (as while it has improved it still lags for a lot of people around the world). I worry if they tried to roll it into youtube that it would turn people away. Their numbers are pretty dependent on a small number of League/ Dota/ Hearthstone and a few other games casters and steamers.

I agree, Twitch livestreams is unwatchable for me most of the times I have tried to use it. Youtube on the other hand, while available, have worked quite good.

It's funny that my experience is the complete opposite, I wonder if it's just our confirmation bias, or the fact that we are too small a sample. It could also be that us being in different countries (I assume) impacts a lot in our experiences.

Re: YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion?

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget Kamcord, the other player in this space (and another YC company). Twitch isn't everything.

I'm an avid gamer and this is the first time I've heard about Kamcord, so that's must mean something.

Same here, never heard of it.

Re: YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion?

#48

It's worth noting that Twitch partially became popular because it wasn't YouTube , and gamers could stream without content restrictions (e.g. copyright and region) Miraculously, this could end up making YouTube comments even worse .

To clarify, it's not as though Twitch is a magical world free from copyright restrictions. However, youtube's copyright enforcement system is extremely aggressive, overzealous, and a hassle for content creators to deal with. Youtube had a huge flood of takedowns for let's play videos due to mostly bureaucratic reasons rather than actual, legitimate copyright violations, for example. And that is what people are avoiding.

Re: YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion?

#50

It's worth noting that Twitch partially became popular because it wasn't YouTube , and gamers could stream without content restrictions (e.g. copyright and region) Miraculously, this could end up making YouTube comments even worse .

I think it's important to take notice that Twitch's recent problems (the buffering problem, chat problems, the delay in general) are problems with their ability to cater to the big tournaments which causes me to really not be all that surprised if this turns out to be true.

The ways they've handled the tournaments have really disillusioned many streamers. I don't know if there's any better way for them to have dealt with the scaling problems they faced as I can only imagine the work that must go into supporting a live stream, with real time chat, that has 100k+ viewers (and for some of the bigger tournaments that's a small number). Something like a 30s+ delay in the stream makes it very difficult to have real interactions between the streamer and the viewers which is particularly bad for smaller streams. For the big guys it doesn't matter as much since their interaction is less back-and-forth and more broadcaster in style and there's absolutely no interaction with the tournaments.

The point is that if this is true it really doesn't surprise me at all. And whether or not it is I think there's definitely an opening for some serious competition to Twitch by making a service that is essentially an exact copy but from a business focus standpoint caters more towards the small-to-medium sized streamer and their audience.

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