Twitch is a revenue loss and basically can only be justified because Amazon also runs one of the biggest cloud infrastructure services on the planet. And understand that was still not enough for Microsoft to keep blooper or whatever the fuck it was (which I actually liked) alive. And with more and more even O(100) Concurrents streamers (which are already like the top 1%) increasingly relying on off site subscriptions and sponsors, that is getting worse. Let alone the real biggies who are even openly discouraging chat from bothering with twitch subs at this point.
And with Youtube Streaming… existing and people increasingly saying variants of “Okay, so what if basically all of their flagship streamers scream kill all the jews and that all trans people should be raped, Kick is an up and comer that just needs to improve their moderation” because of the massive amounts of money coming out of that gambling ad site, being “the default site” is increasingly not viable.
So Twitch has to actually improve their product. And not being ridiculously prudish so that they can branch out to art streams that don’t have to put sticky notes over classic art is one avenue. It is potentially as “game changing” as when twitch made video game streaming a thing at a time when youtube was potentially killing off “let’s plays”.
Except… a lot of the closet chud streamers hate the idea of that. They already thrive on the idea that “twitch is nothing but thots screwing over all the real streamers” (even though there are basically no female presenting streamers in the top 100 and the ones who are are people like Pokimane who actively don’t do OF). And, because they are so fucking stupid, they think that if there are any titties on twitch then all of their viewers will immediately rip their pants off and masturbate furiously rather than watching a white dude from Florida give REAL centrist opinions on social justice. Which ALSO appeals to the O(100)s who would totally be as big as Ninja if it weren’t for those sluts wearing blouses without a sweater.
So if they see a policy that might lower their viewer counts even a fraction while also letting them “go viral” like manbun or Kai “Friends with violent rapists” Cenat did when they “Reacted” to “the topless meta”? It is a win win. And bonus points if they can get some of andrew tate’s bag by “Being concerned for what hypersexualization is doing to men”. And it increases their numbers in case kick wants to do another round of bribes to try to get people who can make it a full hour without screaming slurs on their service.
And that is more or less what has happened every time. Twitch pushes something (mostly horrible, but I was all for this policy change) and the streamers who would be negatively impacted, or think they can use this to grow their following, go batshit to try to get on LSF and go viral on twitter.
And Twitch basically says “Well, that is a dumpster fire that will end poorly for us” and walks back from whatever strawman has been built up.
Notation for (simplifying) “order 100” which (simplifying) means they have anywhere between 100 and 999 concurrent viewers at a time.
It is a good representation for Twitch since that is generally the tier where individual streamers, or even streaming groups, can make a living off of twitch. It is a good indication that they’ll have a good number of subs per stream, are big enough to meaningfully partner for ad revenue, and will have good discoverability in the various directories. I forget what the current data is, but last I saw even someone who averages 200-300 concurrents is already the top 1% of twitch streamers and revenue since the vast majority are lucky if they can hit double digits. And the O(100) streamers will often spike into the thousand range if they get lucky on the homepage.
I’ve also seen speculation that that is the scale that Twitch/Amazon actually want streams to be at since they tend to “pay for themselves”. As opposed to someone like Pokimane who tends to range from 10k-30k (depending on the game/how long she has been going) where even getting a hundred subs donated doesn’t cover the bandwidth costs to serve the 1080p stream to everyone. And then you also have the likelihood that those streamers are doing sponsored streams where they get a massive sack of cash that Twitch never even get to stick their fingers in.
Twitch is a revenue loss and basically can only be justified because Amazon also runs one of the biggest cloud infrastructure services on the planet. And understand that was still not enough for Microsoft to keep blooper or whatever the fuck it was (which I actually liked) alive. And with more and more even O(100) Concurrents streamers (which are already like the top 1%) increasingly relying on off site subscriptions and sponsors, that is getting worse. Let alone the real biggies who are even openly discouraging chat from bothering with twitch subs at this point.
And with Youtube Streaming… existing and people increasingly saying variants of “Okay, so what if basically all of their flagship streamers scream kill all the jews and that all trans people should be raped, Kick is an up and comer that just needs to improve their moderation” because of the massive amounts of money coming out of that gambling ad site, being “the default site” is increasingly not viable.
So Twitch has to actually improve their product. And not being ridiculously prudish so that they can branch out to art streams that don’t have to put sticky notes over classic art is one avenue. It is potentially as “game changing” as when twitch made video game streaming a thing at a time when youtube was potentially killing off “let’s plays”.
Except… a lot of the closet chud streamers hate the idea of that. They already thrive on the idea that “twitch is nothing but thots screwing over all the real streamers” (even though there are basically no female presenting streamers in the top 100 and the ones who are are people like Pokimane who actively don’t do OF). And, because they are so fucking stupid, they think that if there are any titties on twitch then all of their viewers will immediately rip their pants off and masturbate furiously rather than watching a white dude from Florida give REAL centrist opinions on social justice. Which ALSO appeals to the O(100)s who would totally be as big as Ninja if it weren’t for those sluts wearing blouses without a sweater.
So if they see a policy that might lower their viewer counts even a fraction while also letting them “go viral” like manbun or Kai “Friends with violent rapists” Cenat did when they “Reacted” to “the topless meta”? It is a win win. And bonus points if they can get some of andrew tate’s bag by “Being concerned for what hypersexualization is doing to men”. And it increases their numbers in case kick wants to do another round of bribes to try to get people who can make it a full hour without screaming slurs on their service.
And that is more or less what has happened every time. Twitch pushes something (mostly horrible, but I was all for this policy change) and the streamers who would be negatively impacted, or think they can use this to grow their following, go batshit to try to get on LSF and go viral on twitter.
And Twitch basically says “Well, that is a dumpster fire that will end poorly for us” and walks back from whatever strawman has been built up.
What is “O(100)”
Notation for (simplifying) “order 100” which (simplifying) means they have anywhere between 100 and 999 concurrent viewers at a time.
It is a good representation for Twitch since that is generally the tier where individual streamers, or even streaming groups, can make a living off of twitch. It is a good indication that they’ll have a good number of subs per stream, are big enough to meaningfully partner for ad revenue, and will have good discoverability in the various directories. I forget what the current data is, but last I saw even someone who averages 200-300 concurrents is already the top 1% of twitch streamers and revenue since the vast majority are lucky if they can hit double digits. And the O(100) streamers will often spike into the thousand range if they get lucky on the homepage.
I’ve also seen speculation that that is the scale that Twitch/Amazon actually want streams to be at since they tend to “pay for themselves”. As opposed to someone like Pokimane who tends to range from 10k-30k (depending on the game/how long she has been going) where even getting a hundred subs donated doesn’t cover the bandwidth costs to serve the 1080p stream to everyone. And then you also have the likelihood that those streamers are doing sponsored streams where they get a massive sack of cash that Twitch never even get to stick their fingers in.
Mixer was cool.
Interesting take with lots of lore. Thanks for sharing it.