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

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

#231

Post by stingraycharles »

Kylekramer wrote: post #209
alandarev wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Reaching contracts with all major copyright owners in order to stream your out-of-garage hobby? Buying music (I assume that is what you meant), will not let streamers use it, thus there is no meaningful solution as of yet.

Just because contracts are difficult to get doesn't mean you have free rein to do whatever you want. There are plenty of meaningful solutions to this "problem". Don't play music at all. Play music you are allowed to play (be it paid or just music that allows streamers to use it). It may not be what people want to hear, but obviously the music is of value to shanelja's audience as they requesting songs.

That might be a solution, but as OP was saying, that is likely do draw people away.

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

#233

Post by GFischer »

Grue3 wrote: post #201
im3w1l wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As time goes on the non-gamer generations die off. The gamers grow richer and their willingness to pay increase. The new generations will probably also game.

You're forgetting that people grow out of gaming. Once you have a job and a family, gaming just isn't as fun anymore.

It's still fun, you just don't have the time anymore (I feel really bad if I take out a 3-hour chunk of time to play a game, or a real-time game which demands 1-hour of continuous focus).

Much as I don't play football anymore but still watch it, I also follow some games :) and so do many friends in their late 30s / 40s with families (mostly the same ones as others in the thread, like Magic: The Gathering, League of Legends, Hearthstone, etc.).

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

#234

Post by mattstreet »

asdkl234890 wrote: post #204
minimaxir wrote: post #5

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 .

YouTube is a Juggernaut. But Twitch is not, and most of its audience is very young and focused on technology, manly video games. They will move fast . Create the next Twitch now. Wait for YouTube to force content restrictions on the old Twitch. Profit.

And then when you're big, sell out like everyone else.

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

#235

Post by scotty79 »

raldi wrote: post #217
scotty79 wrote: post #24

Semi-related question... Do you know who came up with an idea of allowing companies to own other companies (and when)?

In most free countries, things are allowed by default. If you want to restrict something, then the onus is on you to pass a law.

So if I want my chair to own a website and collect revenue from ads it can? And I won't be taxed a penny since it's not me who earns this money?

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

#236

Post by dang »

mbesto wrote: post #183
dang wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That headline still seems overstated given that other stories are contradicting it. I suppose I should mention that I have zero information about this, other than what's appeared on HN.

Fair enough - I've just seen the contradicting stories as well. Would this fall under sensationalist or link-bait then?

I'm not sure. A lot of this is guesswork.

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

#237

Post by c0ldfusion »

pacmon wrote: post #200
shanelja wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I play an MMORPG called Runescape which has millions of players, I've been playing it since I was 12 and now I'm 21. I stream on Twitch once every few days and frequently have 1,000+ people watching me, subscribing, following and most importably putting eyeballs on Twitch's adverts (which is one of the largest concurrent none-featured community.) If this happens I lose my anonymity (because Google+) which pr…

I'm really not sure why some of the other comments here are focusing on the playing of music on the stream. Obviously they've never watched someone gaming on twitch. Nobody watches twitch for the music someone is playing. People watch it to see other people play and talk about games. Music may be in the background but is often obscured by dialog and game sounds. It's not even close to the quality a youtube video for…

Moving away from the music for a second, the public streaming of gameplay doesn't constitute copyright infringement? I'm no legal expert but it seems to me a bit of a stretch to call it fair use - especially for single player games.

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

#238

Post by morenoh149 »

pferde wrote: post #193
mikeryan wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd want to do something like HLS which can use standard HTTP but not directly to someone's home. You'd need some sort of CDN or cloud intermediary to handle the load. Or some sort of peer-to-peer Popcorn time style (Bittorrent Live?[1]) that can distribute the load across all viewers. Hmm... "Twitch-Time" may be an interesting way to resurrect that service. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/15/5414430/bittorrent-…

Wasn't multicast designed for something like this?

I feel like multicast could solve a lot of similar problems. But not every router on the internet plays nicely with it.

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

#240

Post by jewbacca »

addandsubtract wrote: post #210
jewbacca wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Twitch chat is half the value of the stream-watching experience for me. The "character" of the Twitch chat is valuable. The manically insane hivemind, with all the juvenilia and "shittiness" that is inherent to it, is a roiling primordial stew of genuinely worthwhile culture. It's the birthplace of memes in both the vulgar sense and the higher sense of that word, and, to me, feels like 4chan in its early days. Th…

>Channels which set their chats to subscriber-only mode are shooting themselves in the foot. I think both chat modes (sub and free for all) have their place and time. I enjoy chats that are put into sub-mode, just to read a sensible conversation and have the streamer answer interesting questions, that she otherwise wouldn't have picked up on. On the other hand, some stream chats live off of the chaos that is twitch c…

Good point. I would amend that to "large events and tournaments with subscriber-only chats are poisoning their own hype."
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