New Twitch Terms of Service (multi-stream and ad changes)

[Taf the Ghost]

36 minutes ago, Albal_156 said:

Twitch bits work because its in platform. Donations are outside platform so people have to do more work to send money that aren't bits. I tend to buy a load and then use that over several years because I don't have the income I used to have to jst keep sending them. One bit of Twitch marketing that has worked on us all.

Bits I believe originally started from something Afreeca did in South Korea. They created a lot of interactions and I believe their currency is "balloons"? If I recall right, it start as a way around some tax issues when it came to doing donations, but the instant it got integrated into the chat interaction it took off. It only took Twitch like 5 years to finally implement a system.  It's basically pure profit for the Platform, but Twitch has always been allergic to making money in mutually beneficial ways with their streamers.

[porina]

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

It's whitelabel twitch, it even uses twitch's servers. https://aws.amazon.com/ivs/

 

Like I don't want to be a wet blanket, but that is one service you probably DO NOT want to use if your grievance is with twitch, because ultimately everything that applies to twitch applies to Kick except content guidelines other than copyright/illegal content.

From my perspective, I'm taking a break from streaming on Twitch due to some life changes, and when I return it doesn't have to be on Twitch. I'm small time, barely affiliate, and making money off it is not a factor. I see streaming like gaming in general: if it isn't fun, don't do it. Within the wider friend group, I still watch others. Twitch's recent changes to their ad system makes being a general viewer a pain. It pushed me over to running a Twitch specific adblock. I see they sell an ad-free sub now, same price as YouTube Premium, but I see the value as much lower.

 

I haven't looked in depth at what differences there are with Kick yet. As I said, I just grabbed my username in case I do want to use it later. It is not a given that I will. YouTube streaming is the main alternative I'm considering.

 

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

it would cost kick $2.00USD per hour to stream + 0.12 per CCV. Per hour.

Never mind the streamer, how could the platform stay afloat with that CCV cost alone? That's more than a handful of ads to break even. Presuming Twitch gets a much lower effective rate.

[Kisai]

8 hours ago, grg994 said:

I also just don't get it how viewers who decide to support streamers with more than the cost of a Twitch sub / Youtube membership a month - why they use Twitch bits / gift subs instead of direct donations (Stream Elements / Stream Labs). You just decided to give $50-100 to someone - why the hell one does it in a way where Twitch takes 50% of the money - when one could donate it in a way where 95% would go the streamer?!

 

And this is even after the Twitch leak last year clearly showed what happens to the "donated" money...

Cause outside the US, streamelements pay isn't available. So it goes through paypal and thus reveals your name and location.

 

At least if you use bits/subs, that privacy remains. 

 

[Faer-Anne]

MoistCr1TiKaL just posted a few hours ago too, and given how critical (waits for groans) twitch is to his business, he does seem to have a few important words on it.
Thought I'd add this to the discussion.

[Faer-Anne]

Also, was reviewing their tweet from yesterday, and I feel confident in saying that there's probably a good chance they have no intention of changing the wording of the ToS itself.
 

Quote

We missed the mark with the policy language and will rewrite the guidelines to be clearer.

(emphasis my own)

They did, in fact, rewrite the guidelines... by removing that section entirely.  So the guidelines have been rewritten, as they said, while the ToS remains unchanged, something they never promised.

Just food for thought.

[Taf the Ghost]

44 minutes ago, Faer-Anne said:

Also, was reviewing their tweet from yesterday, and I feel confident in saying that there's probably a good chance they have no intention of changing the wording of the ToS itself.
 

(emphasis my own)

They did, in fact, rewrite the guidelines... by removing that section entirely.  So the guidelines have been rewritten, as they said, while the ToS remains unchanged, something they never promised.

Just food for thought.

There's discussion around there must be some legal aspects Twitch is worried enough about to impliement large scale ToS changes, but, seemingly, have little desire to change enforcement.  It's a bit like a "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" that crops up in American eating establishments. It exists for a combination of legal reasons/defenses more than as some intention to throw out people regularly. 

 

That said, I think the legal side of Twitch's action might make sense, but they also did the Corporate Thing of going "well, we need to do this, so let's also do these 5 other things that make it better for us without communicating anything properly". They'll then walk back 4 of the 5 extras and keep the one that got the least backlash but is most important to them.

 

I still don't get why they won't allow non-monetized channels to multi-stream. Don't they still run ads on those channels?

[Faer-Anne]

The unfortunate truth right now is that we don't know how this will land.  With the ToS still unchanged, it wouldn't be surprising if streamers were still worried (since there is currently no evidence these rules are not gonna be enforced) and still looking to jump ship, or at least start shopping around.  Unfortunately, we likely won't know the final score till something goes wrong.  It's very possible they already intend to start executing their ToS, or start sending out warnings, or maybe they will be like Google and just watch it pass by.  Hard to tell.

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

I still don't get why they won't allow non-monetized channels to multi-stream. Don't they still run ads on those channels?

 

The logic is that multi-streaming is a poor experience because a streamer can't logically interact with more than one stream, PLUS, all but some high-tech streamers (eg LMG) even have the hardware and software, let alone the knowhow to multistream. Because not every site accepts the same encoding settings, that leaves you with generating 720p30 h264 for Discord, 1080p60 6mbit for twitch, 2160p60 h265 for youtube, and whatever 1080p60 stream for instagram/tiktok and so forth.

 

The problem is that the only correct way of multistreaming requires an intermediatory server with 1 encoder per stream, or setting all the streams to the same least common denominator (eg 720p30) and have a linux server with nginx in a data center somewhere do all the re-streaming and pulling the chat from each service back to the streamer.  There are third party services that are VERY expensive that do this already. Your typical sub-1000CCV streamer probably can not justify the cost unless they have significant audiences on multiple platforms.

 

If you multistream from your home, you need to be on fiber and if you really want to stream to 30 services at once at the maximum quality you need to configure each of those services, so if they were all at Twitch (eg 1080p60 6mbit) quality that's 210MBits going out over the wire. It generally doesn't make sense to do so.

 

At any rate, the problem isn't that there are competative platforms, it's that there are only two viable platforms. Youtube, and Twitch. All the other platforms have downsides that can generally be described as "no discoverability" or "niche operations". 

 

For example, Picarto. Is for artists, don't even stream anything else on it.

 

Kick, lacks any moderation, honestly I see this, and go "I doubt kick.com will be around in 3 years"

BTW, $16/hr is not a living wage in most of the US. $24.16 per hour is the living wage for the US as an average.  $16.00 is poverty wages in California and New York. $16 is a living wage in Texas.

 

Where is this money for kick coming from?

 

[Spotty]

33 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Where is this money for kick coming from?

Kick is its own company registered in Australia called "Kick Streaming PTY LTD". https://connectonline.asic.gov.au/RegistrySearch/faces/landing/panelSearch.jspx?searchText=663807645&searchType=OrgAndBusNm&_adf.ctrl-state=fn77skkw3_15
The owner information is paywalled, but from some online articles it's apparently owned by the owner of EasyGo. EasyGo develop a lot of the software that gets used in online gambling websites. According to EasyGo's blog posts, Kick is also backed by major investors Edward Craven and Bijan Tehrani, who are the owners of Stake.com a major online gambling website and co-owners of EasyGo.
(This is all info I just quickly googled, so it might not be 100% accurate. Summary is that Kick was founded by people in the gambling/casino industry)

 

Basically the money is coming from investors in the gambling industry wanting to promote gambling via streamers. Kick was created as a response to Twitch banning chance based gambling content (the Kick company was founded 1 month after Twitch banned chance based gambling). It's probably cheaper for gambling companies to pay streamers to gamble on stream and advertise gambling than it is to pay for TV ad spots, which is either heavily regulated or banned in a lot of countries.

Without the backing of the gambling industry using Kick and its streamers to promote gambling I don't see how Kick could be sustainable.

 

33 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The logic is that multi-streaming is a poor experience because a streamer can't logically interact with more than one stream, PLUS, all but some high-tech streamers (eg LMG) even have the hardware and software, let alone the knowhow to multistream. Because not every site accepts the same encoding settings, that leaves you with generating 720p30 h264 for Discord, 1080p60 6mbit for twitch, 2160p60 h265 for youtube, and whatever 1080p60 stream for instagram/tiktok and so forth.

 

The problem is that the only correct way of multistreaming requires an intermediatory server with 1 encoder per stream, or setting all the streams to the same least common denominator (eg 720p30) and have a linux server with nginx in a data center somewhere do all the re-streaming and pulling the chat from each service back to the streamer.  There are third party services that are VERY expensive that do this already. Your typical sub-1000CCV streamer probably can not justify the cost unless they have significant audiences on multiple platforms.

 

If you multistream from your home, you need to be on fiber and if you really want to stream to 30 services at once at the maximum quality you need to configure each of those services, so if they were all at Twitch (eg 1080p60 6mbit) quality that's 210MBits going out over the wire. It generally doesn't make sense to do so.

I doubt Twitch cares whether or not its streamers are technically capable of multistreaming. The logic behind Twitch not wanting people to multistream is that Twitch wants its streamers to stream exclusively on Twitch. Twitch does not want their streamers (even up and coming ones that aren't partner yet) gaining a following on other platforms and potentially moving to those other platforms or having viewers subscribe or donate on other platforms. As far as Twitch is concerned any money a streamer makes on Youtube, TikTok, etc is money that Twitch is missing out on. Twitch wants viewers to watch Twitch streamers on Twitch because that is how Twitch makes money. This combined with the other changes they tried to implement shows that Twitch wants to take their cut from all revenue streamers earn.

Edited June 8, 2023 by Spotty

[Arika]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

The logic is that multi-streaming is a poor experience because a streamer can't logically interact with more than one stream, PLUS, all but some high-tech streamers (eg LMG) even have the hardware and software, let alone the knowhow to multistream. Because not every site accepts the same encoding settings, that leaves you with generating 720p30 h264 for Discord, 1080p60 6mbit for twitch, 2160p60 h265 for youtube, and whatever 1080p60 stream for instagram/tiktok and so forth.

 

that's shouldn't be up to twitch to decide though. just because a lot of people physically can't, or don't want to have to mess with, shouldn't mean twitch can make a rule that says you're not allowed to.

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, Spotty said:

Kick is its own company registered in Australia called "Kick Streaming PTY LTD". https://connectonline.asic.gov.au/RegistrySearch/faces/landing/panelSearch.jspx?searchText=663807645&searchType=OrgAndBusNm&_adf.ctrl-state=fn77skkw3_15
The owner information is paywalled, but from some online articles it's apparently owned by the owner of EasyGo. EasyGo develop a lot of the software that gets used in online gambling websites. According to EasyGo's blog posts, Kick is also backed by major investors Edward Craven and Bijan Tehrani, who are the owners of Stake.com a major online gambling website and co-owners of EasyGo.
(This is all info I just quickly googled, so it might not be 100% accurate. Summary is that Kick was founded by people in the gambling/casino industry)

 

Basically the money is coming from investors in the gambling industry wanting to promote gambling via streamers. Kick was created as a response to Twitch banning chance based gambling content (the Kick company was founded 1 month after Twitch banned chance based gambling). It's probably cheaper for gambling companies to pay streamers to gamble on stream and advertise gambling than it is to pay for TV ad spots, which is either heavily regulated or banned in a lot of countries.

Without the backing of the gambling industry using Kick and its streamers to promote gambling I don't see how Kick could be sustainable.

Yeah, I don't see it being sustainable if it has to make revenue itself. Likewise goodluck luring non-gambling streamers to it if it's sole purpose is to promote gambling. 

 

That said, someone is gonna have to eat their hat if they are actually going to make good on paying streamers an hourly wage to just sit there and play games. These wacky "taking my ball and going to play at home" type of solutions tend to be very short lived. They fail to grow because the reason they were booted from their previous platform is exactly why they shouldn't have been on it.

 

 

3 hours ago, Spotty said:

I doubt Twitch cares whether or not its streamers are technically capable of multistreaming. The logic behind Twitch not wanting people to multistream is that Twitch wants its streamers to stream exclusively on Twitch. Twitch does not want their streamers (even up and coming ones that aren't partner yet) gaining a following on other platforms and potentially moving to those other platforms or having viewers subscribe or donate on other platforms. As far as Twitch is concerned any money a streamer makes on Youtube, TikTok, etc is money that Twitch is missing out on. Twitch wants viewers to watch Twitch streamers on Twitch because that is how Twitch makes money. This combined with the other changes they tried to implement shows that Twitch wants to take their cut from all revenue streamers earn.

 

I doubt twitch cares at all. What they want is the ad exclusivity and they don't get that if you restream content live. The "bad experience" is an excuse with solutions. It's been pointed out by people who run agencies and advertisement companies that Twitch is just cooking the golden goose, because there is no way twitch is going to be competent enough to handle ad deals, when bigger companies, like Google, don't even do this well.

 

Programatic advertisement is just algorithm chasing of the worst kind. Everyone spends money to outbid each other on the most popular content (eg the top 10 sites, top 10 streamers, etc) and everyone else gets pennies on pennies on the dollar. Sure, maybe xQc might bring in thousands of dollars per month in ad revenue, but that doesn't trickle down to anyone else on the platform. Someone doing an ad buy on twitch isn't getting "every partner and affiliate" as a package, they are getting most of that money spent on the top 10 streamers that bring in the most money, and everyone else, get nothing.

 

The most common ad I see on twitch is for McDonalds. 

This time of night, I might see an ad for McDonalds or Uber Eats or something semi-relevant. If I watch a really popular, brand-safe streamer, I might actually end up seeing 9 ads in a row. Most of the not-particularly-brand-safe mature streamers (eg streamers that swear a lot) tend to have little to no ads most of the time. Which probably doesn't matter to Twitch because these streamers have more subs than they do CCV's.

 

More to the point Twitch would probably be more than happy to see these brand-unsafe streamers dump them, because that means they can get more ad revenue from the ones that are safe... But they must really do not understand their own audience if that is the case.

 

It's the same situation I've seen back with comics in the late 2000's, ad systems go through three cycles:

 

1. High paying, high volume, risk-acceptance while the platform or content grows

2. Low paying, high volume, risk-adverse ads as the high-paying risky ads get exterminated from ad networks because the content sites don't want those (eg video ads on text sites.)

3. Low paying, low volume, risk-acceptance while the platform declines, as advertisers get to dictate the content. (thus, read between the lines, both "risky ads" and "risky content" have been nuked from the popular platform.)

 

4. Switch to paywalls to salvage keeping the platform afloat, and start culling "free to read/watch" content.

 

I've seen this happen with newspaper sites, various forums, I've seen it happen with comics, and we are seeing it happen now with both VOD style video and Streaming video. We saw the switch from 1 to 2 in 2017 adpocalypse. This was also seen in 2009 or so during the last "recession" for earlier web content.

 

Like if anything, Amazon makes enough money hand-over-fist, that there is no reason to treat twitch the way Amazon does. I'm not saying Amazon should subsidize Twitch, but Amazon clearly bought Twitch to complete with Youtube at the time and then has done very little to actually make Twitch an appealing alternative to Youtube. The only thing keeping everyone from jumping ship is that youtube's requirements to be monetized are far steeper, and some people actually like the chat interaction features that Twitch has and Youtube lacks. 

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Arika S said:

that's shouldn't be up to twitch to decide though. just because a lot of people physically can't, or don't want to have to mess with, shouldn't mean twitch can make a rule that says you're not allowed to.

Watch any streamer. Any.

 

Many are often not competent enough to pay attention to ONE chat, never mind two. You know how LMG manages to stream to multiple channels? They have more than one person operating the stream.

 

Few streamers, solo, agency or not, do not have a $10,000 studio and business internet connection to ensure that stream is actually working.

 

[Arika]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

Watch any streamer. Any.

 

Many are often not competent enough to pay attention to ONE chat, never mind two. You know how LMG manages to stream to multiple channels? They have more than one person operating the stream.

 

Few streamers, solo, agency or not, do not have a $10,000 studio and business internet connection to ensure that stream is actually working.

 

again, while true, is not for twitch to decide for people.

[grg994]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

Many are often not competent enough to pay attention to ONE chat, never mind two.

This is not a barrier. Half a year ago I wrote a basic twitch chat client for myself in one night (ca 350 lines of code to print chat messages to command line). It even had the added functionality to filter out emote-only messages (this is why I did it).

 

I bet that a single dev can write a production-grade multistream-chat client unifying all twitch-youtube-kick chats into a single chat window in a week. If it is not done already(?).

[Brooksie359]

On 6/7/2023 at 3:50 AM, Kisai said:

It's whitelabel twitch, it even uses twitch's servers. https://aws.amazon.com/ivs/

 

Like I don't want to be a wet blanket, but that is one service you probably DO NOT want to use if your grievance is with twitch, because ultimately everything that applies to twitch applies to Kick except content guidelines other than copyright/illegal content.

 

it would cost kick $2.00USD per hour to stream + 0.12 per CCV. Per hour. So if you're moistcr1tikal (39th most popular twitch streamer) with 10,000 CCV, it would cost him $1202/hr to stream to his audience. He streams 143 hrs per month. So 1202*143= $171,886USD

 

That is death-knell levels of costs. I do not see Kick (or anyone else) going "hey, would you like to come over to our site, here's a lucrative 70/30 split on a 3.50CPM (which is what twitch offers) of 401,067 , while we break even with our 30% of 171886. When the revenue from the 3.50CPM ads would be $45,045

 

The ad revenue twitch offers, even under optimal conditions does not "break even" with it's IVS service "cost". The CPM rate would have to be $35. To break even. That is something that maybe having 10 "big streamers" you subsidize on the platform, to pull people to your platform, but no... the math doesn't work. Bits and subs are how you keep the streamers on the platform, and when you don't have that, you don't have any reason to use the platform. Twitch gates those features behind having 3CCV, Youtube gates it behind 4000hrs of watch time+1000 followers.

 

What I expect is that kick will just fold once it's forced to have staff to moderate it.

 

Youtube on the other hand, the barrier to entry is too steep to even be in the partner programs if you are aren't bringing an audience from another platform. So these third party services, sponsorships, and so forth might be their only option.

 

Like to put things in perspective. Many people on twitch are only affiliates for the chat interaction features (eg emoji's/stickers.) Those features do not exist on youtube in any form. If those features were available without being at least affiliate on twitch, you can be sure many people wouldn't bother being affiliate either. They just want to use their own emoji's in other streamer's chats.

 

Bigger, business-oriented people have been telling streamers to get off twitch and use youtube for the last 3 years because twitch's payouts are the worst, but they also deem chat interaction as worthless. 

 

You know how you know the streamer deems chat interaction as worthless? When they only read the superchats. If you're big enough you can do this because the chat moves too fast. But if you're a small creator with less than 200CCV, you can not afford to not interact with the chat and only wait for superchats.

 

It's also been pointed out that like 30-40% of any particular streamer's followers are also affiliate status, and maybe 1% might be other partners. Keep in mind the CCV hurdle on twitch for partner is 75. Not like youtube (which amounts to about 64CCV if you do 4x4 hour streams.) Youtube has no "affiliate" tier. So you can't make any revenue from the platform without already being popular on it.

 

 

By the way, Twitch payouts, ARE the worst.

You are forced to run 3 minutes of ads to get 55%, otherwise it's 30%. Yes, that means Twitch already keeps 70% of the revenue AND eats another 10% of it in paying it out if you just make only $50.

https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/affiliate-onboarding-guide?language=en_US#fees

 

Like I don't know why Twitch hates their streamers this much.

Twitch as a product is actually really good. It's mostly the policies that are the issue. Kick is funded by stake and they have plenty of money so I don't think it will fold anytime soon. Anyways with kick you get what you love about twitch but without all of the things you hate. The only issue is they tend to have issues with basically 0 moderation which is good and bad in some cases. Also I think any form of competition for twitch is good because if streamers have actual alternatives then they can leave twitch when they do something wrong and actually put real pressure on them. Also as someone who has used kick it's pretty solid and I could see alot of twitch streamers being more willing to go to kick over youtube because they are so similar to twitch. Honestly if youtube actually put in effort to make streaming good on their platform it would be the biggest streaming platform easily but with how youtube streaming currently is you are just not getting as good of an experience compared to twitch imo. I mean youtube chat is absolutely way worse than twitch chat. If they were the same then youtube would be way better. Also its so hard to find youtube streams like it's almost hidden and you have to search for them. 

[IkeaGnome]

3 hours ago, Arika S said:

again, while true, is not for twitch to decide for people.

I mostly agree with this. However, at the end of the day stream viewers and advertisers are also Twitch's customers. If they want to set a "minimum quality" for streams for their customers to consume, that's up to them. 

 

Generally though I don't agree with these changes or how they're being handled. 

[wanderingfool2]

To an extent I understand some of the Twitch terms, I do disagree with the banner stuff...but I do wonder whether or not it was a poor choice in wording or a way to  give them power over certain streamers who abuse it.

 

Specifically when they use the wording third party, when I originally heard that I was actually wondering if they were talking about the streamers who used third-party tools to effectively run ads (like not being properly sponsored, but more like having a pop-up ad in stream where they aren't choosing the ads necessarily).

 

As a whole though, I sort of understand where they are coming from as well.  Lets say an electronic company wants to advertise on tech channels, they might as well pay for sponsorships instead of ad placements on YouTube...so then you get less relevant YouTube ads, but maybe more directed sponsorships; as a business they are effectively loosing out on money that might have come their way while the creator is benefiting without having to pay lets say YouTube.

 

Honestly though, it would be nice if companies like Twitch and YouTube had created almost a sponsor pool, where they take a small cut of "sponsorship" segments but also provide the sponsorships to smaller channels...effectively like specialized ads that content creators can bake into their videos, and the perk being no re-rolled ads.  Not going to happen now, but it would have been nice to see them go that way originally.

 

11 hours ago, Spotty said:

Basically the money is coming from investors in the gambling industry wanting to promote gambling via streamers. Kick was created as a response to Twitch banning chance based gambling content (the Kick company was founded 1 month after Twitch banned chance based gambling). It's probably cheaper for gambling companies to pay streamers to gamble on stream and advertise gambling than it is to pay for TV ad spots, which is either heavily regulated or banned in a lot of countries.

Without the backing of the gambling industry using Kick and its streamers to promote gambling I don't see how Kick could be sustainable.

I like that there are competitors to Twitch, but the above is one of the reasons I don't ever want to really support Kick.  It was reported Trainwreck made $360 mill in a year, which I think really speaks to how much the gambling industry is capable of funding platforms like Kick.  They effectively are breeding new gamblers...with an average viewership at it's peak of 36509 viewers it means they are hoping to gain back close to $10k from each viewer exposed...albeit they also likely hope that the streamer themselves is addicted enough to spend beyond what was provided upfront to gamble.

 

As a whole though, it just feels morally wrong that they are effectively grooming a gambler mentality/popularizing it but trying to hide it by being a "streaming platform" with high payouts to gamers.

 

  

4 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Also its so hard to find youtube streams like it's almost hidden and you have to search for them. 

What do you mean hard to find?  I find these great streams every day where Spacex is giving away some bitcoin to me /s

 

All things aside, it would have been nice if they just created a live.youtube.com that actually displayed things more like how Twitch does.  Then also create a small section on the homepage where you are shown relevant live streams to videos you have watched.

[Taf the Ghost]

@Kisaithe Twitch acquisition had a lot to do with what you see now from Amazon with NFL broadcasting, more than much of anything else. Prime Video existed, but Twitch was a solid acquisition by them for an entire backend system for Live Broadcasting they could build out and the entirety of the Ecosystem benefits. Frankly, was a pretty cheap acquisition at 970 million USD.

 

As for the nature of the Ad Cycles, I had a discussion in the early, mass scale internet and it was pretty obvious by 2005 that the point of a Website (or an App) isn't to be profitable from Ads. You have Ads, but you have something else that generates your net profit. The traffic simply drives people to buy those products. This is technically McDonald's business model, as they're functionally a real estate company with food on site.

 

I feel like I need to put a read for LTTstore.com here, but that's exactly why LMG does it.

 

Side point: is Linus now, technically, a famous fashion model? 

 

Newspapers died, at scale, because their primary profit center was Classified Ads. Amazon's big profit center is actually AWS, as the store has always been Net Revenue but not really a huge profit generator by %.

 

What we're seeing with Twitch is probably less direct mandates, and far more execs looking out for their heads. We're in a global economic downturn and have been for a bit. It means underperforming sections are on the chopping block. Note Digital Photography Reviews getting axed.  Twitch VPs have to worry about their jobs, so they're looking to make the company not a "loss leader" but simply a neutral product that has strong secondary benefits.

[grg994]

3 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Twitch VPs [...] looking to make the company not a "loss leader" but simply a neutral product that has strong secondary benefits.

Then just:

• restrict 1080p quality to users who spend at least $3-5 (~ 1 Twitch sub) a month on Twitch (that should cover the data egress cost of ca. 100 h / month of FullHD stream)
• or better simply bill a part of the the $0.02 / GB data cost to viewers against their Twitch balance
  • ( because yes, I am going to say that putting a FullHD stream as a free viewer on your secondary monitor while otherwise gaming (because why not now?) - enabled from the money of paying supporters - is not OK.
  • Falling asleep in the bed while playing a FullHD stream on your mobile for 6 hours while you sleep for free is extra not OK - yet now there is no motive against it)
• or even better solution IMO: continue pushing P2P streaming development and deployment (on an opt-in basis)

Being an absolute jerk to creators - small and middle ones who live in a constant uncertainty that Twitch can cut them from their daily living with a single click at any time - is not the way.

 

If Twitch would stop being totally free for unlimited FullHD watch time that's a legit business decision - but abusing the monopolic power to implement anti-competitive rules is unacceptable no matter what. There is no protecting that.

[wanderingfool2]

24 minutes ago, grg994 said:

If Twitch would stop being totally free for unlimited FullHD watch time that's a legit business decision - but abusing the monopolic power to implement anti-competitive rules is unacceptable no matter what. There is no protecting that.

The issue with this is if they announced that they would instantly get as much hate.  So many non tech people, and even some tech people seem to think the processing and distribution of streams is pennies on the dollar to what Amazon makes (rather they look at the company as a whole and think they are a billion dollar company so they should eat the cost or that it doesn't really cost them anything).

 

Ultimately there is no pleasing anyone, as people are used to getting stuff for free at the expense of the investors who keep it propped up.

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

To an extent I understand some of the Twitch terms, I do disagree with the banner stuff...but I do wonder whether or not it was a poor choice in wording or a way to  give them power over certain streamers who abuse it.

 

Specifically when they use the wording third party, when I originally heard that I was actually wondering if they were talking about the streamers who used third-party tools to effectively run ads (like not being properly sponsored, but more like having a pop-up ad in stream where they aren't choosing the ads necessarily).

 

As a whole though, I sort of understand where they are coming from as well.  Lets say an electronic company wants to advertise on tech channels, they might as well pay for sponsorships instead of ad placements on YouTube...so then you get less relevant YouTube ads, but maybe more directed sponsorships; as a business they are effectively loosing out on money that might have come their way while the creator is benefiting without having to pay lets say YouTube.

 

Honestly though, it would be nice if companies like Twitch and YouTube had created almost a sponsor pool, where they take a small cut of "sponsorship" segments but also provide the sponsorships to smaller channels...effectively like specialized ads that content creators can bake into their videos, and the perk being no re-rolled ads.  Not going to happen now, but it would have been nice to see them go that way originally.

 

I like that there are competitors to Twitch, but the above is one of the reasons I don't ever want to really support Kick.  It was reported Trainwreck made $360 mill in a year, which I think really speaks to how much the gambling industry is capable of funding platforms like Kick.  They effectively are breeding new gamblers...with an average viewership at it's peak of 36509 viewers it means they are hoping to gain back close to $10k from each viewer exposed...albeit they also likely hope that the streamer themselves is addicted enough to spend beyond what was provided upfront to gamble.

 

As a whole though, it just feels morally wrong that they are effectively grooming a gambler mentality/popularizing it but trying to hide it by being a "streaming platform" with high payouts to gamers.

 

  

What do you mean hard to find?  I find these great streams every day where Spacex is giving away some bitcoin for me /s

 

All things aside, it would have been nice if they just created a live.youtube.com that actually displayed things more like how Twitch does.  Then also create a small section on the homepage where you are shown relevant live streams to videos you have watched.

Tbh I think youtube doesn't want to make livestreams easy to find because they probably think they are less profitable than videos. Either that or they are just incompetent 

[DrGreenGiant]

On 6/6/2023 at 7:13 PM, Faer-Anne said:

Summary

 Twitch has updated their Terms of Service as of today (June 6th 2023) to include language that appears to prevent all multi-streaming (unless otherwise explicitly allowed), as well as preventing "baked-in" sponsorships.  

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

While the simulcasting restriction has been true for a while now if your a partner, this appears to now apply as a blanket ban, rather than only to higher tier accounts.  As for the advertisement limit, it seems to only include prerecorded content, but is worded loosely enough (by including the "And audio advertisements" as well as "display or 'banner'" parts) to potentially envelope any advertisement.

 

Sources

http://web.archive.org/web/20230606163104/https://www.twitch.tv/p/en/legal/terms-of-service/

EDIT: Replacing the source with a web archive link.  Seems Twitch might be changing them again soon.

Just want to mention, it's already changed since your quote, for simulcasting.

 

As of right now it says:

Quote

This Section does not apply to non-profit or government entities that are live streaming for non-commercial purposes.

The key word change here being "or".

 

Many non-affiliates are not making profit and not streaming for commercial purposes.

 

As this is currently worded, that makes them exempt from the ban on simulcasting.

 

[Spotty]

5 minutes ago, DrGreenGiant said:

Just want to mention, it's already changed since your quote, for simulcasting.

 

As of right now it says:

The key word change here being "or".

 

Many non-affiliates are not making profit and not streaming for commercial purposes.

 

As this is currently worded, that makes them exempt from the ban on simulcasting.

 

"Non-profit" does not mean somebody who is not making a profit. It means registered non-profit organisations such as charities.

[DrGreenGiant]

30 minutes ago, Spotty said:

"Non-profit" does not mean somebody who is not making a profit. It means registered non-profit organisations such as charities.

It doesn't say that. It clearly says "entities."

 

A person is an entity.

 

Edit: Unless this is an American term or something and it means something different there to the UK?  All the British dictionary definitions I can find include a person as an entity and I couldn't find a definition in the Twitch documents to disqualify a person being an entity.  I am starting to think this may be a language issue (ironically, given their recent statement.)

 

Edit edit: Apparently the same definition in America too.  A person is an entity.  So I am still convinced a "non-profit entity" applies to many non-affiliates.  Some sources:

https://www.bea.gov/help/faq/1061

https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/person-or-entity

https://thelawdictionary.org/legal-entity/

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/entity

Edited June 8, 2023 by DrGreenGiant
Added sources for definition

[AndreiArgeanu]

hahah