[HN Gopher] Microsoft is shutting down Mixer and partnering with...
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Microsoft is shutting down Mixer and partnering with Facebook
Gaming
Author : minimaxir
Score : 215 points
Date : 2020-06-22 18:33 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| aboringusername wrote:
| I find it intriguing that generally speaking, people have issue
| with monopolies. Yet, as much as everyone claims there's a free
| market, MS has failed with both a mobile OS and a streaming
| service, and essentially gives it over to the giant.
|
| FB didn't even need to do anything, just their existence and
| networking abilities is enough to make alternatives unviable.
|
| I do wonder what we will do in the long term as most places are
| centralized. Google and Apple for a mobile OS, FB (or FB
| properties) for social networking, there's Twitch for streaming,
| YouTube for video hosting.
|
| These days, the chances of competition are (IMO) impossible due
| to the sheer size and influence (and power) of these mega giants.
| jorams wrote:
| > I find it intriguing that generally speaking, people have
| issue with monopolies. Yet, as much as everyone claims there's
| a free market, MS has failed with both a mobile OS and a
| streaming service, and essentially gives it over to the giant.
|
| When people take issue with monopolies, they are not asking for
| a company like MS to break that up. They are asking for
| smaller, independent players.
| tso wrote:
| I've heard good things about the mobile OS, but with Mixer
| Microsoft missed the mark.
|
| They did a decent job of copying the Twitch UI to make the
| transition familiar, but then had a number of unnecessary
| friction points that I'm sure drove folks away. As an example
| with my own experience: I was a somewhat regular Shroud viewer
| on Twitch. When he had his first Mixer stream I tuned in, only
| to find out that A) his overlay notifications hadn't been
| integrated and B) I couldn't even minimize the chat pane of the
| viewer without signing up for a Mixer account, which was an
| onerous process.
|
| Not having a large streamers overlay integrations working prior
| to his debut stream tells me that MS does not understand how
| critically important community engagement is in live streaming.
|
| Forcing me to sign up just to be able to control the viewer UI
| drove me away and removed any chance of me returning and
| finding organic reasons to sign up for Mixer.
|
| That was the one and only time I watched Shroud after his move.
| earthtobishop wrote:
| According to the most recent Streamlabs report: YouTube Gaming
| Live accounted for 22.1% market share for 2019 in terms of
| hours watched while Twitch market share accounts for 75.1% and
| Mixer market share accounted for is 2.7%.
|
| Youtube Gaming is also growing extremely fast since they have
| rolled out their new creative suite.
|
| https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/streamlabs-
| newzoo-q4-ye....
|
| Facebook Gaming hardly has any market share so I don't
| understand why you are saying their existence and networking
| abilities is enough to make alternativeS unviable. The
| streaming industry seems to be one of the most competitive
| markets out there.
| huhuhuhuhuh wrote:
| A more recent report: https://blog.streamlabs.com/streamlabs-
| stream-hatchet-q1-202...
|
| facebook gaming is catching up really fast. it went from
| 'hardly any market share' to 11% of hours watched.
| Sleaker wrote:
| is FB gaming even a platform that people _want_ ? I just get
| annoyed and skip past stuff that shows up on my feed cause that
| 's not how I want to use FB ever.. If I wanted to watch someone
| streaming I'd go use a site specifically for that, but maybe my
| internet use is dissimilar to how most people expect content to
| be delivered?
| [deleted]
| totaldude87 wrote:
| Didnt ninja and Shroud bag a lucrative deal with Mixer this
| year?! guess they will go back to twitch after all
|
| https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/ninja-shroud-could-ret...
| Operyl wrote:
| And likely keep all the money too, assuming the contract is
| void and is not transferred to Facebook. Double dipping!
| ehsankia wrote:
| Rumors are they were offered double the initial offer to come
| to Facebook, but they both declined and forced Mixer to cash
| them out.
| minimaxir wrote:
| > Sources: Facebook offered an insane offer at almost double
| for the original Mixer contracts of Ninja and Shroud but
| Loaded/Ninja/Shroud said no and forced Mixer to buy them out.
| Ninja made ~$30M from Mixer, and Shroud made ~$10M
|
| > Ninja and Shroud are now free agents
|
| https://twitter.com/Slasher/status/1275145243478892544
| apacheCamel wrote:
| Man, getting paid to switch just to have the service go bunk
| anyway. Probably one of the easiest $30M ever. I really
| wonder if he lost any sort of revenue over those months that
| he switched? I can't imagine it coming anywhere close to the
| $30M he made just for the time.
| EastSmith wrote:
| Ninja had 80-100k viewers when he switched to Mixer, and
| now on Mixer he has 2-5k. Each sub on twitch was making him
| $3-4/month (do not know how many subs he had, but I can
| imagine 10-30k). So, he lost $30-$120k on Twitch subs alone
| per month.
|
| Then an Ad on Twitch in front of 100k viewers is different
| than an Ad on Mixer (not really sure if they have Ads on
| Mixer). With Ninja's viewership on Twitch 60 second Ad, can
| probably bring him more than $10k. Not sure if he had used
| Ads though (may streamers chose not to use them).
| whoisjuan wrote:
| All the rumors about MSFT cashing them out seem highly
| unlikely. They definitely got money but not all of it. If they
| got all of it, then MSFT lawyers are probably the shittiest
| lawyers in human history (and Ninja's/Shroud's the best).
|
| I can see Facebook trying to lure them with similar contracts
| but I think that's just part of the stupidity of trying to
| dominate in this space.
|
| I'm gonna assume that they signed agreements where they were
| only getting paid the bulk based on performance numbers tied to
| their presence in Mixer.
|
| So it's clear that their brands didn't do shit for Mixer, and
| now Twitch knows this so they lost any leverage they could
| have. But they probably are going back to Twitch because they
| can get way more distribution and keep building their audience.
| They just won't get the same benefits they got with those
| exclusivity deals.
|
| Those streamers are clearly the biggest losers here.
| Kiro wrote:
| No, your assumption is wrong. They kept the money and are now
| free to go back to Twitch where the real money is. They are
| clearly the winners here.
| whoisjuan wrote:
| Do you have a source? Because when this type of thing
| happens, that's usually a common fake rumor. People just
| want to shit on big corps so they relish on the idea that
| those corps lost large amounts of money.
|
| If it's true, then MSFT needs better lawyers to write their
| contracts.
| bsder wrote:
| > If it's true, then MSFT needs better lawyers to write
| their contracts.
|
| Contracts are a function of power.
|
| If you are asking me to leave roughly $1.5 million+
| guaranteed per year for your service that's going to
| bring me effectively _zero_ for _years_ , you're going to
| have to pay me quite a lot in cash.
|
| $10 million is about the 10 year run rate--which is a bog
| standard valuation for a business.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Source:
| https://twitter.com/Slasher/status/1275145243478892544
|
| "Facebook offered an insane offer at almost double for
| the original Mixer contracts of Ninja and Shroud but
| Loaded/Ninja/Shroud said no and forced Mixer to buy them
| out. Ninja made ~$30M from Mixer, and Shroud made ~$10M"
|
| Yes, I know it is a tweet, but slasher is widely thought
| of as the leading game journalist, when it comes to
| gaming "leaks" and the like.
| Tehdasi wrote:
| For a 30m contract, the streamers are not going to be
| swindled by the fine print. The contracts will have had
| break clauses if MS doesn't support Mixer enough or it
| discontinues Mixer. Prolly also have minimum revenue
| numbers for the streamers too. Streamers don't want to be
| locked to a service which makes them irrelevant.
| Yhippa wrote:
| Bummer. Streaming from the Xbox was easy and fun. You could
| stream a multiplayer game with your friends! Friction was reduced
| to stream and you didn't need to mess with stream keys or
| overlays. Sad.
| superbaconman wrote:
| Not sure why you're getting downvoted. This was a very nice
| Xbox feature. They had it for PC on their Xbox bar for a while;
| You could stream any window or your desktop to the same mixer
| account as your gamertag. Then one day it just disappeared. I
| guess that should have been a sign they were having issues.
| Yhippa wrote:
| I was wondering where that that went and thought it was a bug
| or something.
| koheripbal wrote:
| That will almost certainly still be possible to do via FB.
| Yhippa wrote:
| Maybe. It's interesting that Sony removed FB integration from
| their OS for the PS4.
| s9w wrote:
| Wow that came out of nowhere. Mixer could be so great but they're
| massively mismanaged with what I guess is out of touch
| management. They had such a big budget and still failed. Like
| many couldn't get used to the bad site and never used is. But
| competition for twitch would have been nice. The internet can be
| weird.
| [deleted]
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| I thought Mixer would've been a home run if they integrate it
| into the new xbox's dashboard. Guess it's company infighting that
| killed it.
| [deleted]
| i_rawr_u wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/22/21298963/ninja-shroud-mix...
|
| I'm wondering how these contracts for the the Mixer exclusives
| will pay out.
| kawfey wrote:
| This comes at no surprise to the game streaming community.
|
| A number of popular gaming stream helpers, namely Harris Heller
| from Alpha Gaming [0], have kept streamers away from Mixer to
| focus on Twitch and hosting VOD/highlights on YouTube in order to
| best grow a community.
|
| Facebook is a large enough platform that this might cause some
| trouble for Twitch, but we'll see. I think the gaming community
| is deeply seated around Twitch/YT. Since Facebook has already
| lost tons of younger users, and rejects anonymity, and doesn't
| have dark mode, I don't think this will turn out very good for
| Facebook.
|
| [0]
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCATWC1JSlhzmYeDbjnS8WwA/sea...
| Already__Taken wrote:
| Facebook don't really embrace the idea of an alternate persona,
| in fact it's almost antithetical to them. Interesting to watch
| this play out.
| namrog84 wrote:
| I normally use twitch but with fb mixer news I decided to
| take a look into fb gaming. I was able to create a page named
| "namrog84" and then comment on someone's stream and all they
| saw was namrog84.
|
| I'm sure it might be possible to figure out which facebook
| real name made and owns that page. But at face value I was
| able to stream and comment under my alternate persona.
| namrog84. Without having to make a new Facebook account. They
| have a drop down in streamer chat if you want to use your
| real name or a name of a page.
|
| With that said, I'm very hesitant of fb gaming streaming and
| this is my first ever time really looking at it.
| r00fus wrote:
| Pseudonyms only work if you trust your cover won't be blown
| in a way that compromises your investment/safety. Is
| Facebook trustworthy enough for that?
| koheripbal wrote:
| It's still trivially easy to create an account on Facebook
| without using your real name.
|
| The first LPT I taught me daughters when they started using
| the internet is that on the internet, you are a super hero -
| no one should know your real name.
| r00fus wrote:
| Your actual valuable personal data is your graph
| connections, not your node.
|
| Once you start connecting, you unmask yourself quite easily
| - many have tried creating spare accounts (even with VPNs
| and separate browser contexts) and have quite quickly been
| shown their exist friend set as "recommendations by FB".
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| While I do wholeheartedly agree that your online self
| should be an alternate, detached persona, for someone
| underaged, falsifying information on an account on FB is
| against their TOS. Their entire business model is selling
| data about the "real you."
|
| I don't have children, and as a 20-something I know the
| struggle and seeming impossibility of avoiding FB products,
| but I try to avoid pouring my whole identity into them.
| It's rough when the social culture is rapidly shifting to
| "unless you put everything online you're not worth my time"
| or makes you one of those "privacy nuts."
| arkitaip wrote:
| It's also very hard to keep that account anonymous due to
| the crazy about of data gathering Facebook does and the
| ways it used that data to recommend you to new "friends"
| and what not.
| jitl wrote:
| Nit: Facebook has dark mode
| brogrammernot wrote:
| One word why I think this will work out well: money.
|
| I can see FB/MS tapping into deep pockets to offer some top
| streamers a great deal to move platforms. If they get enough of
| them to move and the service is stable, intuitive and fun to be
| on then I can see FB doing well.
|
| FB knows how to build communities, they know how to build
| engaging content and how to run that type of business. I would
| bet on them figuring out how to leverage their subject matter
| expertise on that side house to bring a very good product
| offering in this new vertical.
|
| There's an ecosystem there that they can tap into as well,
| marketplace, pages, etc that if they can pull it off, could
| make it a very lucrative all-in-one solution for the streamers.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > One word why I think this will work out well: money.
|
| This is indeed usually the strategy.
|
| What people seem to forget though, is that Mixer is not the
| first streaming competitor that thought of the idea of "just
| pay streamers a bunch of money, and hope the viewers follow".
|
| Although, in some sense, this does work, there is a long
| graveyard of failed attempts.
|
| It is a bit of a winners curse. A platform can _always_ just
| pay people a bunch of money to join their platform. That is
| the easy part. The hard part is actually making back the
| money that you spent on those creators.
|
| And the reality is that none of the attempts to just buy out
| streamers, by vast over paying for them, has ever worked, for
| the long term.
|
| Eventually the money spigots dry up, and the people spending
| the money start to wonder when they are actually going to
| make back on their investment (hint: the answer is never).
| ethbro wrote:
| The problem most companies have with this approach is that
| they stop short of total war.
|
| _If_ you wanted to pay streamers to defect to your
| platform, then don 't cheap out and try to pay a few of
| them.
|
| Pay _all_ of them. As much as it takes. And blacklist the
| ones who turn down your initial offers.
|
| WCW vs WWF is illustrative.
|
| You can't win while a rival platform remains viable. And
| they remain viable as long as they can fund themselves.
|
| So either you play to drive your opponent out of business,
| or don't play at all.
| bentcorner wrote:
| There's probably a place for streaming sites that cater
| to very very specific content. NSFW is the obvious one,
| but I imagine you could try to serve one narrow nice
| extremely well, like auto racing, speed runners, live
| coders, baking, whatever. Become known to that community
| and offer features that mainstream streaming sites don't
| want to provide because it doesn't make sense for
| everybody.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Although I agree with you that this strategy might work
| in a duopoly type situation, where there are two
| platforms competing against each other, in a borderline
| zero sum game.
|
| The problem, though, is in markets where there are more
| than two participants.
|
| What happens when Mixer does this strategy, as well as
| Facebook gaming, as well as youtube gaming? Answer: the
| costs shoot up into the stratephere, and _all_ of them go
| bankrupt.
|
| It is kind of like a game of chicken. Massively
| overbidding to buy out the entire market only works if
| there aren't other people out there who are willing to
| meet you at the same level of irrationality, and burn the
| whole thing to the ground, along with you.
|
| IMO, the only real workable strategy, similar to this,
| would be if those are smaller platforms, agree to do some
| sort of team up (which is sorta what is happening with FB
| gaming and mixer), so that the irrational actors don't
| all lose the game of chicken.
| aerovistae wrote:
| No way. This is literally exactly what Microsoft just did,
| and here we have the results. Facebook can try it, and
| they'll fail too.
|
| There is absolutely _zero_ chance of younger demographics
| moving to facebook. I'm in my 20s and know many gamers in
| their 20s/teens and we all avoid facebook like the plague.
| There's no chance.
|
| We've seen it again and again and again-- you can't just
| steal away a successful business by throwing money at the
| problem and copying it. Look at zune, look at tidal, look at
| google+, look at bing, look at mixer. All either outright
| failed or stole at best a tiny fraction of market share.
|
| There's so many examples of corporations trying and failing
| at this strategy that it's just a comic act by now.
| scarface74 wrote:
| _I 'm in my 20s and know many gamers in their 20s/teens and
| we all avoid facebook like the plague. There's no chance._
|
| You realize your anecdotal circle of friends is really not
| relevant in the grand scheme of things?
| aerovistae wrote:
| For serious scientific studies, anecdotal data is not
| useful.
|
| For product fit, the experiences and feedback from your
| target audience are _extremely_ "relevant in the grand
| scheme of things." If your target audience is saying "I
| literally don't know anyone who would want to use this,"
| yeah, that's relevant.
|
| Unless you're aiming to imply that me and my friend group
| and greater gaming community are the exception and in
| fact the majority of young people use facebook, in which
| case....lol.
|
| My "anecdotal experience" is interacting with dozens of
| gaming communities which mysteriously all link to
| subreddits and discords and twitches and _never, ever_ a
| facebook group. That 's not very anecdotal when these are
| communities of tens and hundreds of thousands of people.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > For serious scientific studies, anecdotal data is not
| useful.
|
| This is still wrong; anecdotal data is what motivates
| studies in the first place.
|
| What anecdotal data isn't is a conclusion.
| scarface74 wrote:
| _Unless you 're aiming to imply that me and my friend
| group and greater gaming community are the exception and
| in fact the majority of young people use facebook, in
| which case....lol._
|
| Have you done a statistically relevant survey of what the
| "majority of young people do"?
|
| As a reference, if you go to r/cscareerquestions you
| would swear that no other company exists for graduating
| software engineers but the big 5 tech companies and if
| you don't spend every minute "learning LeetCode to work
| for a FAANG" your life is over and you might as well kill
| yourself.
| vvillena wrote:
| But it's what it is. Most people active on Facebook 10 to
| 5 years are not active anymore, and young people avoid
| it. If Facebook wants to attract young gamers, they will
| need a new brand for their gaming platform.
| the_duke wrote:
| I can affirm that everyone under 20 I know also strongly
| dislikes Facebook.
|
| They are all on Instagram though...
| scarface74 wrote:
| No we have _two_ pieces of anecdote on HN....
| the_duke wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is.
|
| Yes, these are anecdotes. If you have references that
| show Facebook is popular with young demographics I'd love
| to see links and discuss them.
|
| Otherwise these anecdotal data points are useful. While
| not representative, it gives some ideas about mindset.
| scarface74 wrote:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/16/facts-
| about...
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| "Around eight-in-ten (79%) of those ages 18 to 29 use
| Facebook". Anecdotally, I know a number of people who 1)
| say they hate Facebook 2) say they never use it 3) show
| up in my feed at least once a week for the last month.
|
| I think there's an under-reporting problem here, where
| there's a stigma associated with using Facebook (it's for
| old people!) yet younger people still use it a lot. Note
| that this doesn't bode well for launching a service aimed
| at people in their 20s. Even though they're the most
| common demographic, they might not want their peer group
| to know they're using it.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/16/facts-
| about...
| the_duke wrote:
| Interesting, especially the data around teens.
|
| I would have expected a big rise around 18-22 because a
| lot of college / University and other interest group
| activity is there, and there are more varied friend
| groups and family to keep up with.
|
| The 4th survey for 13-17 year olds with 50% is somewhat
| surprising for me though.
| traek wrote:
| > you can't just steal away a successful business by
| throwing money at the problem and copying it. Look at zune,
| look at tidal, look at google+, look at bing, look at
| mixer.
|
| Look at instagram stories?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Sure. Look at Google (Yahoo, Altavista, Lycos), look at
| Messenger (AIM, ICQ), look at GMail (Hotmail, Yahoo Mail),
| look at Facebook (Myspace), etc...
|
| You absolutely CAN steal a userbase if the quality of your
| product is sufficiently better than the existing
| alternative. The problem with Mixer is that the only real
| advantage they had was latency, and that's not a big enough
| reason to draw people to the platform.
|
| Facebook's current problem is that they want to use their
| existing network and one of the primary features of a
| gaming platform is anonymity. 99% of the streamers on
| twitch can't be identified by anything but their usernames,
| and that's the way they like it. Facebook is antithetical
| to that experience.
| wayneftw wrote:
| A Facebook property like Instagram might do well. I think
| more than half of the streamers that I watch have an
| Instagram link in their Twitch profile.
|
| Personally I hope for a good decentralized _(actually
| decentralized, not d.live)_ streaming network to take off.
| jowsie wrote:
| Almost every streamer will have twitter/instagram because
| it's near impossible to get sponsorships/brand deals
| without them.
| gmueckl wrote:
| A decentralized streaming network is technically
| infeasible with the current Internet. Keep in mind that
| every watcher adds upload bandwidth requirements to a
| node somewhere else in the network. Consumer network
| connections are too asymmetric for that.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| I have streamed live sports events using p2p for years
| and it works just fine.
| bentcorner wrote:
| I agree. For me, the core problem with facebook gaming is
| that I'm not going to interact with a gaming stream while
| I'm logged into my facebook account. I use my FB account to
| connect with family, and it works great for that, and
| that's it. Using it for anything else just inevitably leads
| to messy information leakage.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| MS already did that by paying Ninja ~30M to stream on mixer
| originally. He averaged like 2K viewers. They did the same
| with shroud with the same result. Now Ninja and shroud are
| supposedly being paid out in full for their contracts and are
| free to sign with any platform.
|
| Why offer them a second massive truckload of money when the
| first truckload fundamentally did not work.
| texasbigdata wrote:
| Sorry just to clarify, thirty million US dollars?
| Like...the currency used in America?
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| I really don't understand this confusion about the
| ridiculous amount of money in gaming. Sony is projecting
| $20 Billion in revenue this FY. Nintendo is projecting
| 10, with no new console launch. There are multiple game
| developers who make billions of dollars every year.
|
| Gaming is the most profitable and highest revenue part of
| the entertainment industry, and it's not even especially
| close.
| pdw wrote:
| between $20 and $30 million, according to this
| https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/26/tech/video-game-
| streaming...
| cthalupa wrote:
| Yes.
|
| The current rumor is that FB offered to double the Mixer
| contracts for Shroud and Ninja as well, and that both
| turned them down. Not sure how accurate said rumors are.
| filoleg wrote:
| No idea where the confusion comes from, but yeah, it was
| at least 30 million USD.
| [deleted]
| s3r3nity wrote:
| Where are the numbers on youth disengagement? Last I checked
| and from what they've said in investor calls, daily active
| users are still (!!) growing. If I were a streamer that gets $
| from donations, I should really target 18+ anyway, who are old
| enough to have a credit card.
|
| Also, it seems like FB Gaming numbers are really taking off,
| partly due to signing some big names from Twitch. [1]
|
| Lastly, they actually do support gamertags, but I'm iffy on the
| anonymity concept being a negative here. Twitch has a problem
| with some toxic chats, users making throwaway accounts to get
| around ban, etc. If I were a streamer, this would be a great
| alternative for me to build a community with less overhead in
| managing the toxic parts.
|
| All in all, it doesn't have to be a "winner-take-all"; it's
| nice to have some healthy competition in the market, even if
| the only folks that can do it are the biggest players (Amazon /
| Google / Facebook.) I'm just _really_ surprised that Microsoft
| couldn't make Mixer work despite the tight Xbox integrations.
|
| [1]
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/venturebeat.com/2020/01/09/face...
|
| EDIT: grammar / spelling, as typing on a phone in 2020 is still
| tough
| duskwuff wrote:
| > Last I checked and from what they've said in investor
| calls, daily active users are still (!!) growing.
|
| How much of that is in US/EU users, though? I wouldn't be
| surprised if most of the growth is in other regions.
|
| (And, this being the modern Internet: How many of those new
| DAUs are real people?)
| dimmke wrote:
| The name "Facebook Gaming" seems really bad branding to me.
| That would be like calling Instagram "Facebook Photos" or
| something. It just doesn't fit at all. At least Mixer had some
| name ID and some high profile streamers locked into contracts.
| basch wrote:
| This usually comes down to whether you need a FB id to sign
| into something. Its "Facebook" if you need to be logged into
| facebook to get to it. In this case, its a way to keep you on
| the Facebook site longer, instead of fracturing off another
| uninteroperable (inopreable, teroperable?) platform.
| oconnor663 wrote:
| "interinoperable"? :)
| r00fus wrote:
| Hey, something something Farmville...
| alibert wrote:
| Mixer has a nice streaming tech. I used to stream to a friend who
| could interact (voice chat) with me with almost no stream delay
| (<500ms). I don't think Twitch offers a latency as low as Mixer.
| Last time I tried (some weeks ago), it was still 2+ secs.
| tinodotim wrote:
| Remarkable if Microsoft really thought they could just buy two
| big streamers (and a couple of smaller ones) to get Mixer going
| and that Twitch market share - without making much change to the
| platform and its community.
|
| "A typical Microsoft" I guess?
|
| Big pay day for Ninja & Shroud though if they're really just free
| to join Twitch again, their returns will be huge.
| JoshGlazebrook wrote:
| The only thing I don't like about Twitch is they got rid of their
| Roku app. I assume it's Amazon's doing, but it still eliminates a
| large portion of users who want to watch gamers on Twitch.
| saltedonion wrote:
| What's preventing streamers from streaming to multiple platforms
| at once. Is it against he Eula or something ?
| passivepinetree wrote:
| In addition to some of the other well-thought-out replies, much
| of the allure of streaming comes from live interaction,
| donations, chat, etc. Streaming to multiple platforms at once
| is more feasible for events like esports competitions, but
| would really make it difficult for a streamer to engage with
| their audience.
| hobofan wrote:
| While it's a bit harder to engage with audiences on multiple
| platforms, it's definitely possible.
|
| Since the communication direct is still mostly one way, you
| can e.g. aggregate all the chats from multiple platforms into
| a single one, and treat it like you would right now.
| Rocketbeans.tv, a German television-like streaming station
| that I watch a lot has a "superchat"[0] that does just that
| (which I think they built in-house), and it works really
| well. From a quick search, it looks like Restream.io also
| provides such a tool.
|
| [0]: https://rocketbeans.tv/superchad/
| WesleyLivesay wrote:
| Monetization. The platforms require Affiliate/Partner streamers
| (so people with Subscribe buttons) to be exclusive streamers on
| their platform.
| ehsankia wrote:
| What if you're not a partner on the other platforms, can you
| still stream to Facebook, Youtube, Twitch, all at the same
| time? Smaller streams rely heavily on chat and interactions,
| but 1000+ viewer streams generally don't so you don't need to
| read 3 different chats. You can still receive donations and
| maybe ad money?
| detaro wrote:
| then you can do it, and some streamers do.
| brian-armstrong wrote:
| Why do you think this would help? Going from 0 to 1 viewers
| on one platform alone is quite hard, and then again for 1
| to 10 viewers. You would have to put in that effort for
| each different platform, and ultimately you would still
| need to pick one and ditch the others once you qualify for
| partnership
| rosywoozlechan wrote:
| The streamer known as Destiny and Giant Bomb sort of do
| this. They stream on Twitch but they accept monetization
| through alternative means. Destiny is actually exclusive to
| Twitch, he just hosts his streams on his own website and
| accepts subscriptions and donations there in addition to
| Twitch, all of his chat is on his own website though. Giant
| Bomb is not monetized through Twitch, it's monetized
| through CBS Interactive and hosted on their own site, but
| the stream is a Twitch stream. So they're not on multiple
| platforms, but they've not tied themselves to Twitch's
| monetization.
| WesleyLivesay wrote:
| You can, but you will not get ad money (which requires
| Affiliate/partner).
| hexmiles wrote:
| not sure about others, but for twitch if you become a partner,
| required for most (all? don't remember) monetization you can't
| stream to other platform.
| sdan wrote:
| Yes. Applies to YouTube, Twitch, and other afaik.
| detaro wrote:
| Mixer had (pre-Microsoft) some neat tech, but wasn't enough in
| the end. The few streamers I knew moved there have all long moved
| back.
| haunter wrote:
| Unfortunately Twitch is buffering for me all the time. 4K
| streaming on Mixer was flawless, I can't even do 720p 60fps most
| of the time on Twitch :/
| lwansbrough wrote:
| Could be throttling. Have you tried watching through a VPN?
| haunter wrote:
| Yeah VPN works perfectly but I'm not a big fan of it I have
| to use it all the time just to watch Twitch
| user5994461 wrote:
| Can you drop the 60FPS to 30FPS ? That would cut the
| bandwidth requirement in half.
| errantspark wrote:
| It's kind of sad to see Mixer/Beam go, they did have a couple
| unique features I made good use of.
|
| - FTL protocol, a streaming protocol based on UDP which had sub 1
| second delay times, far far superior to what Twitch is capable
| of.
|
| - User interaction, I was able to quite quickly set up buttons on
| my page that let my stream viewers control the RGB lighting in my
| room in interesting ways, and it was a lot of fun for me as a
| streamer to get that realtime interaction with my viewers
| willcipriano wrote:
| > FTL protocol, a streaming protocol based on UDP which had sub
| 1 second delay times, far far superior to what Twitch is
| capable of.
|
| I don't use/watch any of these platforms but I heard the delay
| is a feature of Twitch to prevent people from "screen peeking"
| players when they play online.
| detaro wrote:
| You can always add artificial delay if that's what you want,
| but if you don't want to delay to interact with your
| audience/have them interact with the game, you want something
| that can do low-latency.
| AdamTReineke wrote:
| The real-time nature of Mixer streams was amazing. I loved
| being on voice chat with friends while watching their streams,
| it felt instantaneous. Hopefully more platforms can pick this
| up (looking at you, 7 second latency Steam streaming).
| uncoder0 wrote:
| I'm very familiar with Mixer my company does interactive
| streaming and I really liked Mixer/Beam they had a great team.
| Their mobile interactivity is next to their low latency as the
| high marks of the platform. I do think their audience
| acquisition strategy with large streamers was lopsided. Maybe
| if they went farther down the longtail and involved a lot more
| content creators they could have carved out a whole community.
| Really sad to see them go. Shameless plug warning but, if
| you're moving over to Twitch there are a lot of great
| extensions and you can always easily build one on your own with
| our tools at Muxy.
| sohamsankaran wrote:
| I wonder what happens to folks like Ninja with big exclusive
| deals.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| They were all paid in full because their contracts were bound
| to the Mixer platform specifically.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Well, if they were paid in full, it's because that's how
| Ninja/Shroud and their lawyers were able to negotiate the
| contract. It's arbitrary. The contract could also have just
| been "contract terminated if Mixer ends".
| seaish wrote:
| Apparently Ninja and Shroud were paid in full: $30M and $10M
| respectively.
| https://twitter.com/Slasher/status/1275145243478892544
| maps7 wrote:
| This amount of money is crazy to me. Are these guys really
| that big of a draw? Are they just so good at the games they
| play or are they funny/entertaining?
| kungato wrote:
| They are entertaining enough to a big group of people and
| they managed to build and sustain their audience. It's like
| asking is Robert Downey Junior the best actor in the world.
| If you don't see the value that just means you aren't the
| target audience
| bdz wrote:
| >stars like Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, Cory "King Gothalion"
| Michael, and Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek -- will be released from
| their contracts, and Microsoft says it's up to them where they
| decide to go.
|
| >"It's up to them and their priorities," says Vivek Sharma, the
| head of Facebook Gaming, meaning the platform isn't actively
| pursuing exclusive agreements with any of Mixer's biggest
| names.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/22/21298963/ninja-shroud-mix...
| karthikshan wrote:
| Does this mean they don't get paid out for the remainder of
| their contract? These streamers took a massive brand hit by
| leaving twitch for so long...
| hobofan wrote:
| $30M for not even a full year, and not even a gigantic
| brand hit (they seemed to retain their fanbase pretty well,
| and did well with Youtube clips) sounds like a great deal.
| [deleted]
| cjbprime wrote:
| They do get paid out -- I think I read that Ninja receives
| $30M and can now go back to Twitch.
| Wafje wrote:
| It seems like they do. https://twitter.com/RLewisReports/st
| atus/1275139749716480000
| kevindong wrote:
| I'm curious about what the contracts the big streamers signed
| have to say about contract termination fees.
| rauchp wrote:
| Really surprising move, considering that's the main thing
| Mixer had going for it. Facebook got the short end of the
| stick on this deal, considering they'll have to negotiate
| again with these Twitch streamers.
|
| Now that these streamers have an idea how much engagement and
| money they'll be losing from switching platforms, they'll
| probably demand more from FB Gaming for an exclusivity
| contract. I haven't heard people talk about Mixer being a
| better platform or experience for streaming, so I'm not sure
| what FB gets out of this considering Mixer's talent was its
| most valuable asset.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| How long did Mixer exist again? For the people here who think
| GitHub is too big too fail under Microsoft... and let's not
| forget that MS used to have its own code repository website
| before shutting it down...
| reggieband wrote:
| I'm very surprised that MS has quit this quickly. I didn't expect
| them to win in the short-term against Twitch and I doubt they did
| either. This suggests that Mixer didn't just do poorly (which
| could have been assumed) but it must have been a deep catastrophe
| that showed no signs of turning around.
|
| I think the problem with video, and the monopolies it continues
| to create, is the massive expense of data transfer. I'm guessing
| Mixer had hundreds/thousands of streamers active at any given
| time. I assume this was a massive cost and the revenue to support
| it (even ignoring their deals with streamers like Ninja/Shroud)
| just wasn't there.
|
| It makes me doubt the profitability of Twitch, although you can
| be sure they are breathing a sigh of relief today.
| the_duke wrote:
| They tried to integrate with XBox.
|
| They pumped millions and millions into exclusivity deals with
| streamers like Ninja and Shroud, only saw small growth and then
| completely stalled.
|
| Even during the recent lockdowns they remained almost flat,
| while others had big viewership spikes.
|
| At some point you just have to call it quits.
|
| The new competition besides Twitch is FB Gaming and YouTube,
| which can leverage existing platforms with a huge userbase.
|
| An isolated platform that offers no value over Twitch has no
| chance in this environment.
| m0xte wrote:
| Quitting is Microsoft's number one skill in the last decade.
| Matt3o12_ wrote:
| > massive expense of data transfer
|
| Does anyone here know how video platforms like Twitch managed
| to get started considering how expensive cloud data transfer
| pricing is? The steam bandwidth is considerably higher then
| video bandwidth (twitch uses a bitrate at around 8000k while
| YouTube has 3414k for comparable 1080p60fps videos). They also
| cannot take advantage of edge delivery expect for very large
| streamers because viewers expect a latency of 3secs or lower to
| their favorite stream.
|
| I am really curious if anyone here knows how they managed to
| get started? They probably couldn't take advantage of super low
| bandwidth prices until recently because they were too small but
| had very expensive requirements (a lot of streamers only
| streaming to a very limited amount of people with high quality
| while also having a few very very large streamers stream to a
| huge amount of viewers and all of that in real time).
|
| > It makes me doubt the profitability of Twitch, although you
| can be sure they are breathing a sigh of relief today.
|
| I think twitch is highly profitable these days. Streamers have
| a considerable amount of subscribers, who pay a monthly fee of
| $5 (or sometimes even more) and stay for long durations. Twitch
| takes a 30-50% cut (lower depending on how big the streamer is
| and if twitch likes the streamer). Even streamers who average
| less then 1,000 concurrent viewers sometimes have between
| 100-500 subs.
|
| And they have also created bits, which is a virtual currency
| viewers can use to tip their favorite streamers and twitch
| takes a similar cut (and they only let you but it in bulk
| beforehand to make it less transparent on how much you actually
| spent on them, similar to many mobile games in-app purchase
| model). And they play ads before streams (and during streams if
| they streamer decides to play them for a small cut), they also
| heavily advertise amazon prime (twitch streams constantly say
| hey you can use amazon prime to subscribe to me for free), they
| have premium users and probably even more monetization
| techniques.
| timClicks wrote:
| FWIW when Twitch started as justin.tv it was much, much
| poorer quality than 8000k.
| deadmutex wrote:
| Small nit: quality and bitrate aren't directly comparable.
| E.g. codec and decoders choice can make a huge difference.
| E.g. A lower bitrate av1 stream can be higher visual
| quality than higher bitrate x264 stream.
|
| Where this matters is that sometimes consumers will
| automatically assume bitrate=quality (especially in audio),
| and then claim one audio service has better quality than
| other just because they use a higher bitrate.
| mcny wrote:
| > FWIW when Twitch started as justin.tv it was much, much
| poorer quality than 8000k.
|
| Yup, to expand on that I had a chance to chat with someone
| at Justin.tv and they said a thirty second ad pays a lot
| more than the cost of serving video for an hour. iirc this
| was around 2009 or 2010?
|
| Also, iirc even through 2014, my friends who played League
| of Legends (lol) used to watch stream on VLC instead of
| directly on the website on Twitch. The consensus was for
| lol, 720p60 was preferable to 1080p30.
|
| I don't think Twitch got where it got because of technical
| prowess. If I had to guess, it was just lucky being first.
| It would be interesting to hear stories from the people at
| YouTube. Why did it take them so long to add live
| streaming?
| [deleted]
| MaximumMadness wrote:
| If I'm Twitch the #1 thing I'm thinking about right now is how to
| extend the olive branch to all of these creators. Favorable
| partner terms, sponsorship, resources etc.
|
| This is a market share growth opportunity that comes around very
| infrequently
| bena wrote:
| Really? Why?
|
| Twitch is already over 70% of the streaming market. Let's say
| that both of them go to YouTube. Let's also say that Ninja and
| Shroud accounted for all of Mixer's market share..
|
| That would give YouTube roughly 20% of the market, up from
| about 17%. Twitch is still 70% of the market.
|
| Twitch should be looking for ways to make it easier for
| streamers to stream and get noticed. Find the next Ninja.
| amalcon wrote:
| I'm not really into that whole scene, but my third-hand
| understanding is that the Amazon Prime integration is a form
| of this. Basically, while Microsoft offered millions to
| people like Ninja, Amazon offers somewhere around three
| dollars each month to each Prime member, with the restriction
| that they must give it to a mid-sized or bigger streamer that
| they enjoy. This makes it worth the time for growing
| streamers, and lets big-but-not-Ninja-big folks make a job
| out of it.
|
| It's actually a pretty interesting economic / business model
| case study: they're basically crowdsourcing which streamers
| they subsidize while simultaneously offering a cross-
| promotional perk to an existing customer base.
| r00fus wrote:
| Do you have a source on this? I didn't know about Prime
| scrip.
| mey wrote:
| See https://twitch.amazon.com/tp (click on the Prime
| Status on Twitch section)
| amalcon wrote:
| Just conversations, but a quick googling points to
| twitch.amazon.com. That appears to offer Amazon Prime
| members "free channel subscription ($4.99 value) every
| month".
| [deleted]
| MaximumMadness wrote:
| Maybe market share isn't the right way to frame it. Much of
| the success of gaming platform's is built on goodwill. Due to
| their botched attempts with bans, community guidelines,
| harassment, toxicity etc. Twitch could certainly use some
| positive press these days. IMO it would be seen as a great PR
| move to welcome these newly platform-less streamers will open
| arms. Facebook is already offered people who move from Mixer
| to FB Gaming and stay for 90 days somewhere in the range of
| $2.5K
|
| Will most of them probably move to Twitch anyway? Yes. Will
| Twitch be losing money in the short-term by giving away value
| here? Probably. But in the long-term having these ex-Mixer
| folks happy and feeling welcomed will have positive impact on
| their fans, communities, and gaming as a whole. Not to
| mention the revenue potential these folks could bring.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| They're still important and it builds good will which helps
| them gain more loyalty from the viewers. E.g. Facebook spies
| on you while Twitch supports the creators I like.
| bena wrote:
| If you have 70% of something, I would think you have a
| decent amount of goodwill and loyalty already.
|
| And I'm not saying the value of acquiring them is zero. I'm
| saying the value of acquiring them may not be worth it.
| 013a wrote:
| You would think that, and you'd be wrong. Many streamers
| dislike Twitch, in the same way many YouTubers dislike
| YouTube for their policies. Most stick around, because
| they saw what happened to Ninja, and he represented the
| _best_ of what could be possible; your viewers by-and-
| large wont follow you, your community is on Twitch, they
| 're not your community, they're Twitch's community.
|
| Twitch could be a lot worse, and they'll probably get a
| lot worse now losing their only decent competition. The
| general murmur around the Twitch exclusivity deals was
| that they 10x'd in value and quantity after Microsoft put
| a price on Ninja. Unless YouTube gets serious, the same
| level of serious that Twitch and Mixer were, Twitch has
| no reason to add value to these streamers. The streamers
| wont leave; they can't.
|
| And we all know YouTube won't do the right thing by their
| content creators, because they already don't.
|
| This is a very dark day for content creators. Mixer
| failed, but it at least represented literally the only
| threat on Twitch's radar; there was always the question
| of "well what if Mixer blows up" guiding biz-dev at
| Twitch. Unless streamers band together and unionize,
| Amazon is going to crush them.
| toohotatopic wrote:
| If there is 10x to be made outside of Twitch I am pretty
| sure content creators will organize and create their own
| streaming platform. They know who is who, it takes some
| weeks to get everybody on board and then Twitch has a
| serious competitor. For that reason, payout won't get
| down.
| timwaagh wrote:
| because you dont want your competitors to get anymore air
| than they are getting already. 73-17 is better than 70-20. if
| youtube gets its act together on the streaming front they are
| a big problem because so many more people that don't
| currently watch streams use it compared to twitch.
| v7p1Qbt1im wrote:
| Same for YT and FB. It's just 3 players now.
| Lorin wrote:
| 9 year gaming/esports industry insider here.
|
| I don't understand why Mixer, after failing to penetrate the game
| streaming market - didn't pivot to a tech/coder oriented
| streaming service. It would have better integrated with
| Microsoft's other products (GitHub, Teams, etc), and trivialized
| finding marketing/ad-fill partners.
|
| Twitch has a 'science & technology' channel grouping which is
| nice, but there's a demographic mismatch and thus it has less
| than 10k viewers on average. This niche would have been a shoe-in
| for a Microsoft service.
|
| I also wonder what would have happened in a parallel universe
| where Beam wasn't acquired by Microsoft.
| [deleted]
| butler14 wrote:
| This seems super out of no where and way too soon to throw the
| towel in.
|
| Thinking there was some break clauses in Ninja and Shroud's
| contracts that incentivised MS's early exit.
| ohyeshedid wrote:
| My concern is how FB Gaming will be installed/embedded into the
| Xbox dash. If it's like the current FB SDK, does that mean that
| FB will be siphoning data off xbox users that don't use FB?
| mtgx wrote:
| Do you even have to ask at this point? Wasn't even Microsoft's
| Visual Studio tracking devs by default now?
|
| And let's not forget about the hot privacy mess that is Windows
| 10...
| baggachipz wrote:
| I've been an Xbox player since the very first one, and my
| gamertag has been Xbox Live Gold (and now GamePass Ultimate)
| since the dawn of the service. If they have the audacity and
| malice to shove Facebook on my dashboard, I will buy that
| hideous PS5 without giving it a second thought and switch
| wholesale.
| jitl wrote:
| A closer partnership with Facebook is going to loose Microsoft
| the coming console generation just like their focus on "TV is
| the new water cooler" lost them the last one.
|
| Gamers don't want Facebook. They don't want TV. Gamers want
| games.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Do you really think anyone is going to base their console
| decision on a facebook partnership?
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| >Gamers don't want Facebook. They don't want TV. Gamers want
| games.
|
| Yeah, the fact that the PS2 could play DVDs had absolutely
| nothing to do with its tremendous success.
| vertex-four wrote:
| The difference is that everyone (to some approximation) who
| is likely to buy a PS5 has a computer of some description
| that is perfectly capable of streaming media - you're not
| thinking "oh, I need to get that console so I can watch
| Facebook Gaming".
| twalla wrote:
| This is how I convinced my parents to buy both a PS2 and
| PS3 - the PS3 was one of the most affordable blu-ray
| players when introduced, it just happened to have a game
| console attached to it.
| jdofaz wrote:
| It was a much better player than most dedicated bluray
| players at the time too.
| dvt wrote:
| Interestingly, this indicates that the streaming market is
| saturated, and Mixer simply had no room to grow. The analysts
| probably didn't realize their gamble was a zero-sum game.
|
| Ninja & Shroud weren't enough to tip the scales and Mixer had
| zero traction. Of course they will be fine, but it sucks for the
| smaller streamers that hitched their wagons to Mixer and are now
| left to hold the proverbial bag. Even more telling is that
| Microsoft is burying this news under WWDC20, probably embarrassed
| about the entire snafu.
| noodle wrote:
| Well, lots of streamers really don't like Twitch. But Mixer was
| a downgrade for most people in terms of features and
| functionality. Same situation with YouTube - a lot of content
| creators aren't happy with it, but everything else out there is
| just a worse version of YT. The bigger, older platforms have a
| lot of momentum.
| theklub wrote:
| I'm pretty sure mixer had a ton of features twitch didn't
| have at one point but I could be wrong. I just remember
| watching kabby in the height of the pubg craze and he had a
| ton of cool stuff no one on twitch had.
| legohead wrote:
| It's okay to copy a product. You just have to do it better.
| And Mixer wasn't even close. I actually liked Mixer's video
| quality more than Twitch, but that's not what makes Twitch
| fun for users...
| detaro wrote:
| Mixer did have comparatively low latency and interaction
| features, that was a unique point at least back then.
| Apparently not enough though.
| thorum wrote:
| Mixer had potential as a streaming platform, they completely
| failed to create a culture anything like what Twitch has. Any
| streamer who wanted to move to Mixer would have to sacrifice
| being part of that Twitch community.
| asebold wrote:
| By courting big names like Ninja and Shroud though, I feel like
| Mixer wasn't interested in "creating" a culture, they wanted to
| flat out "buy" twitch's. Safe to say it wasn't successful
| within the past year, but I'd expect it to take much longer
| than that anyways. Why would they give up right after dumping a
| huge amount of time and money into it?
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Their culture is 100% why they failed. They were technically
| far superior to Twitch. Their video quality was much better
| with lower CPU utilization, their latency was extremely low,
| and their UI was intuitive and butter smooth.
|
| Their culture though... Before Shroud and Ninja joined, there
| were rules that you couldn't tell people your age. They had
| rules on how wide your shirt straps could be, and just
| generally seemed like if you had any opinions on other people,
| you would be chastised. They valued explicit political
| correctness, but that's not so good when you're making a place
| designed for just chilling and hanging out... At least, not
| when you're trying to grow.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _They valued explicit political correctness, but that 's not
| so good when you're making a place designed for just chilling
| and hanging out... At least, not when you're trying to grow._
|
| Another way to word it is that the online gaming community is
| extremely toxic and you have to accept a decent chunk of that
| toxicity to grow a community in the gaming space.
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| I don't know, I think this is a bit harsh -- I'm not
| arguing the gaming community isn't toxic, it certainly can
| be -- but rather I think Mixer wanted its community to be
| just like those actors who played hip 20-somethings in
| "real gameplay" game trailers at E3. It always seemed to
| have a "hello fellow gamers" mentality, and simply did not
| "get" the type of people it was trying to recruit.
|
| If a stream and its viewers is a community, then on Mixer
| you didn't really have the chance to make that community
| "yours" -- rather, you had to be what Mixer wanted you to
| be, which is some made-up archetype of the advertiser-
| friendly hip gamer who captures that coveted market segment
| without saying anything even remotely controversial.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| What I am about to say, I mean with absolutely no
| disrespect. What you consider non-toxic is considered
| uptight and overly sensitive by many... Whether you think
| that's right or not is beside the point. I understand the
| need for political correctness and politicing at work. It
| keeps conflicts from arising and it avoids hurt feelings.
| It's not as valued by many people outside of work. That can
| affect the growth of sites like this.
|
| Put in another way: each stream is an individual community.
| By making such explicit rules, they are policing culture
| and suppressing certain identities. That is counter to the
| environment needed for growth.
| brian-armstrong wrote:
| > They were technically far superior to Twitch. Their video
| quality was much better with lower CPU utilization, their
| latency was extremely low, and their UI was intuitive and
| butter smooth.
|
| This sounds like FUD. The streamer controls the video encode,
| not the platform. Also Twitch has had <1s latency streaming
| for more than a year.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Does FB gaming have a culture?
| [deleted]
| alexbanks wrote:
| Happy that Shroud and Ninja get to come back to Twitch
| apazzolini wrote:
| My solution to a streamer moving to Facebook Gaming is simply
| going to be watching a different streamer.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Streamers really are a dime a dozen. No offense to streamers
| here.
| tech-historian wrote:
| Mixer joins its brethren in Microsoft's list of discontinued
| products.
|
| https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued-micros...
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