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Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff

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Re: Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff

#241

Post by dathinab »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #199
wnevets wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Live streaming 1080p 60fps video to a channel with even just a few hundred viewers I've been in streams with less than 100 viewers and seen hundreds of dollars in bits & gifted subs being spent in a single hype train. Are those really unprofitable for Twitch?

When someone buys a sub ($5-25 depending on tier), Twitch gets half the money. Bits are a little more complicated. Donators have to buy bits ahead of time and then donate them. 100 bits is worth $1 to a streamer. But 100 bits will cost between $1.18 and $1.26 depending on how many bits you buy at once. Buying a larger block means paying a little less. (Side note: Once the streamer has received the bits, they can't be…

Sub prices also depend an your country. In some countries subs are noticeable cheaper then $5. Through I guess most viewers are in the countries where it's somewhat around that price.

Re: Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff

#242

Post by coffeebeqn »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #67
Brybry wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think viewership peaked in 2021 and has been flat or down since then. [1][2][3] I know some of my friends watch Twitch less because the ad policy became toxic. [1] https://twitchtracker.com/statistics [2] https://sullygnome.com/longtermstats [3] https://streamscharts.com/overview#:~:text=Twitch%20growth%2...

I personally switched to youtube* for the streams I watch, since twitch's ads can be really disruptive. Not to mention they used to be ad-free for prime members, while at the same time the ad rolls became longer and longer. *I pay for youtube premium

Every streaming platform seems to be converting to adding ads on top to cover the costs. Disney+ just did it for my paid membership - which I cancelled

Re: Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff

#243

Post by Brybry »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #74
Brybry wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think viewership peaked in 2021 and has been flat or down since then. [1][2][3] I know some of my friends watch Twitch less because the ad policy became toxic. [1] https://twitchtracker.com/statistics [2] https://sullygnome.com/longtermstats [3] https://streamscharts.com/overview#:~:text=Twitch%20growth%2...

Basing ‘peak’ of a streaming service on a time when people were forced to be indoor seems like a bad metric. They (probably/hopefully) won’t see that rate of growth organically, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the peak.

I was responding to the OP statement (and source with 2021 as the last data point) that "Viewership growth seems good".

Lockdowns were in 2020, not 2021.

Yes, April 2020 gave a huge bump to Twitch and the pandemic obviously had a large impact on the following years. Twitch had really good growth.

But look at the sources I linked. Looks to me like viewership has been down every year since 2021.

Re: Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff

#244

Post by coffeebeqn »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #48
raz32dust wrote: post #19

I don't get it. From an outside perspective, it feels like they must be raking in the cash - they take a large cut from subscribers and the number of ads is crazy. Viewership growth seems good [1]. The product seems solid and well-built. The demand is clearly there. Serving live video is obviously expensive, but curious if that is really the biggest component (other than personnel). Would be cool if some industry ins…

Did they have a hiring spree during the pandemic like all the other tech companies and now returning to the mean?

And record numbers of people looking for unhealthy para social content when stuck at home

Re: Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff

#245

Post by raydev »

wozniacki wrote: post #210
lchengify wrote: post #92

Not mentioned in the article but definitely the elephant in the room: The rise of TikTok streaming [1] TikTok doesn't focus on gamers, but attention is finite. TikTok surpassed Twitch a while ago in revenue and it's accelerated since then. TikTok + Youtube (very profitable) makes Twitch at best a flat third place. Not a great business to be in when ZIRP ends. > Nine years after Amazon’s acquisition of the company, th…

Also not mentioned is the recent rise of Ad-Free ( yes completely AD-FREE as in not a single ad ever! ) platforms like KICK.com [1][2] Amouranth used to stream exclusively on Twitch.com but now has moved mostly to Kick.com and streams the majority of her time there. In this respect, Twitch's draconian content policing needs mentioning. People would receive week-long bans for unnamed reasons or super petty things. The…

Remains to be seen whether Kick can last long enough to get to profitability. It's certainly advertiser-poison, since what you call "draconian content policing" is closer to what advertisers want to see.

Re: Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff

#246

Post by dathinab »

hot_gril wrote: post #208
wnevets wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Live streaming 1080p 60fps video to a channel with even just a few hundred viewers I've been in streams with less than 100 viewers and seen hundreds of dollars in bits & gifted subs being spent in a single hype train. Are those really unprofitable for Twitch?

How long was the stream? Doesn't sound unprofitable if it's 30min to 1hr (my uneducated guess), but then again idk how many streams get donations like that.

Most "normal" streams get their maximum viewer count around 2 hours into the stream. While streamers tend to have something like a waiting room for the first 10-30min of their stream.

A typical streamer which can life from it but isn't getting rich (or even wealthy!) tends to stream 6+h streams at at least 3 days a week more likely 4-5. Which additional time costs for stuff like filling taxes preparing streams, updating software etc. it's not too rare for streamers to have a 50+ hour week, without getting rich or even wealthy from it. While some pop of and get wealthy or rich it's not the norm. Most do so because they love what they are doing and/or would have problems with other jobs.

I have seen multiple cases of small streamers using Twitch as a form a therapy to help them to overcome social awkwardness or some kinds of anxiety. Also some cases of depressive or otherwise sick people using it to have something like a job even through they are to sick to get any normal job even if they didn't need it for money (to avoid brain rot of being stuck at home and maybe some additional semi-social contacts).

Naturally there are exceptions e.g. of streamers "capturing some whales" and making quite good money with a fraction of the effort of the normal case, but in the end this are exceptions.

Re: Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff

#247

Post by thrdbndndn »

kenhwang wrote: post #148
lchengify wrote: post #92

Not mentioned in the article but definitely the elephant in the room: The rise of TikTok streaming [1] TikTok doesn't focus on gamers, but attention is finite. TikTok surpassed Twitch a while ago in revenue and it's accelerated since then. TikTok + Youtube (very profitable) makes Twitch at best a flat third place. Not a great business to be in when ZIRP ends. > Nine years after Amazon’s acquisition of the company, th…

I've worked for a major streaming company and with several other major streaming companies (including Twitch); I'd like to think I have a pretty good understanding of streaming costs. > Youtube (very profitable) The "very" part is probably not true, and that's with Google's massive advertising empire behind it. There's a good reason why Google is going so hard at anti-adblocker initiatives. You can't run a profitable…

I don't think these two categories are differentiated by if their content is free (despite they do have a deference in this regard), it's more about how the customers pay for it.

Hack, I'd say livestreaming (Twitch, the livestream part of YouTube/TikTok etc.) is a very different business altogether compared to normal "video streaming" (serving VODs).

Also when talking about livestreaming business, one can't ignore China. They have some massive platforms (in both cashflow and audience size) despite being unknown outside China. Like Bilibili, Douyu, Huya, etc.

Re: Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff

#248

Post by coffeebeqn »

mullingitover wrote: post #118
tiffanyh wrote: post #76

Is Section 174 a driver for these layoffs? It now eliminates the ability for businesses to deduct their R&D expenditures as an expense. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-23-08.pdf

It doesn't eliminate it, just eliminates the ability to realize it 100% up front. Now, it has to be amortized over five years for domestic companies, 15 years for foreign companies.

I can’t imagine this would be an issue for a trillion dollar company

Re: Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff

#249

Post by johannes1234321 »

seoulmetro wrote: post #51
fivre wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that has nothing to do with staffing. Korea has a uniquely hostile ISP market where service providers want to charge foreign services ridiculous amounts (versus peering agreements in most markets) for access to Korean consumer networks

Korea has a philosophy of local conglomerates first and foreign companies only existing if they prop the local conglomerate up. It's a very good strategy as the Korean market is lucrative and the Korean companies have opportunities to spread worldwide. (they just suck at it) Twitch got sent a foreigner-tax and didn't pay it, that's all. Korea already has a thriving version of Twitch called AfreecaTV. (edit: Oh it's n…

> (they just suck at it)

That's the counter-argument.

As they don't have competition from global products, they can deliver worse products and don't have the need to improve.

This can be seen in many markets with import restrictions/tarifs.

Re: Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff

#250

Post by debo_ »

shrewduser wrote: post #9

Any idea why south korea is particularly cost prohibitive? i would assume twitch would be very keen to have a presence there.

Nick Plott (a longtime American commentator for StarCraft Brood War who lives and works in Korea) has a video that goes into this: https://youtu.be/o9n2PRbwGMY
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