Twitch streaming lays off 500 staffers

HockeyJon said:
I'm definitely showing my age here, but I still don't understand Twitch.
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I dont watch it, but it's basically a live version of youtube., which youtube does do live stuff too. They are know for people playing games and others watching, that part I dony quite get but hey I dont have to like everything that exists, although others use it just to talk about rando crap too and if you are a good looking girl you really dont have to do much except bounce around and go teehee
 
sfsuphysics said:
I dont watch it, but it's basically a live version of youtube., which youtube does do live stuff too. They are know for people playing games and others watching, that part I dony quite get but hey I dont have to like everything that exists, although others use it just to talk about rando crap too and if you are a good looking girl you really dont have to do much except bounce around and go teehee
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That explains why that didn't work for me.
 
sharknice said:
It's kind of insane how many employees a lot of these tech companies have. So it doesn't really surprise me when there are big layoffs. They have to have tons of fat they can shave off.
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This, they go on massive hiring spree's when money is just flowing in trying to corner all the talent, then times get tough and they start to see how useless most of them are. Its like when people were mad about Elon laying off so many Twitter people, when years before, Twitter had considerably more users and traffic, and had a fraction of the staff..

All companies have "fat" they can trim at some point, but instead everyone thinks they are employee of the century at their jobs (some are, very very few are) and then cry a river when the company realises they were a total slack off and then got fired for it...
 
“Last year, we paid out over $1 billion to streamers,” Clancy noted. “So while the Twitch business remains strong, for some time now the organization has been sized based upon where we optimistically expect our business to be in 3 or more years, not where we’re at today.”


Twitch has massively failed to capitalize on their position. MS closed down Mixer and Youtube is also strangely unwilling to take steps to make platform updates to truly cater to streamers. There is a gigantic hole, waiting to be filled. Twitch could have been doing that. Strangely, they have been VERY conservative with features, platform updates, etc. Its insane to me. Streaming could be way larger, by now.
 
HockeyJon said:
I'm definitely showing my age here, but I still don't understand Twitch.
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Zoomers love hanging out on heavily censored platforms, I noticed. A thirteen year old version of myself would've been banned from that website nearly instantly.

Blows my mind that content creators will stake their livelihood on a platform that can remove you for any reason or no reason at any second. Then, on that same platform, e-thots are raking it in with near-nudity and other weird shit. Make no mistake, Twitch and the fact it has grown to such success is just another example of the dystopia we live in.
 
Just to be clear, Twitch is laying off staff not cutting ties with contracted Streamers (i.e. that one billion number). There's a big difference here.

If you're in the Elon camp, you might see this as Twitch cutting the fat. Of course, it also may be a path to promotion for those who get to stay and/or more work load.
 
chameleoneel said:
“Last year, we paid out over $1 billion to streamers,” Clancy noted. “So while the Twitch business remains strong, for some time now the organization has been sized based upon where we optimistically expect our business to be in 3 or more years, not where we’re at today.”


Twitch has massively failed to capitalize on their position. MS closed down Mixer and Youtube is also strangely unwilling to take steps to make platform updates to truly cater to streamers. There is a gigantic hole, waiting to be filled. Twitch could have been doing that. Strangely, they have been VERY conservative with features, platform updates, etc. Its insane to me. Streaming could be way larger, by now.
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Could be the entire platform is built on quicksand and no one is willing to make any major changes cause it will all come crashing down, you know, like most software these days...
 
MrGuvernment said:
Could be the entire platform is built on quicksand and no one is willing to make any major changes cause it will all come crashing down, you know, like most software these days...
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As much as I am a huge fan of twitch - I looked into "subscribing" because I get tired of the ads and the feed sometimes gets all whack for whatever reason (I have 2.5G fiber so it's not a local connectivity issue). The pricing is so ridiculous I couldn't even justify it. I asked for a gift card for Christmas from my wife (link and all) and she even passed it up. It's $12/mo to get no ads and credits you can throw to your favorite streamers - even if you are a Prime member. It's dumb.
 
chameleoneel said:
“Last year, we paid out over $1 billion to streamers,” Clancy noted. “So while the Twitch business remains strong, for some time now the organization has been sized based upon where we optimistically expect our business to be in 3 or more years, not where we’re at today.”


Twitch has massively failed to capitalize on their position. MS closed down Mixer and Youtube is also strangely unwilling to take steps to make platform updates to truly cater to streamers. There is a gigantic hole, waiting to be filled. Twitch could have been doing that. Strangely, they have been VERY conservative with features, platform updates, etc. Its insane to me. Streaming could be way larger, by now.
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Twitch does not see a reason to invest in the platform to innovate and make it better for viewers / performers because of a lack of strong competition in the streaming space. Blame the competing companies and their reasoning that you stated for the predicament that streaming is in now. :)
 
t1337duder said:
Blows my mind that content creators will stake their livelihood on a platform that can remove you for any reason or no reason at any second. Then, on that same platform, e-thots are raking it in with near-nudity and other weird shit. Make no mistake, Twitch and the fact it has grown to such success is just another example of the dystopia we live in.
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Seem to make a lot of sense, (how much different was it for people making Radio-TV content in the 90s? more competitor to turn too maybe...), much easier to use a platform that have already foottraffic than build your own.

The best platform for building foot traffic will likely be the one that can moneytise, attract high profils events-users, etc..., for those or good ads it will be almost only possible if they can do this, making the dance you describe quite likely.
 
cageymaru said:
Twitch does not see a reason to invest in the platform to innovate and make it better for viewers / performers because of a lack of strong competition in the streaming space. Blame the competing companies and their reasoning that you stated for the predicament that streaming is in now. :)
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Perhaps, although I kind of see it as something that works, so why try to change it. It annoys me to see Youtube or Google "innovating" where I'm sure they're doing something behind the scenes but they're pulling a Costco and moving around where everything is, oh that tutorial video that tells me how to disable notifications from last year is useless because they moved where that toggle option is, thanks for innovating! (the old man in me).

Speaking of layoffs... Google to lay off 700 employees too, did all these companies hire a bunch for the Christmas season or something?
 
OFaceSIG said:
Maybe I'm a grumpy old man (43), but twitch seemed like a kind of dumb idea from the get go.
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Yes. Twitch started in 2011 so you already achieved your grumpy old man status when you were 30.

It was mainly used for competitive StarCraft 2 back then, so if you weren't into StarCraft you probably didn't care. It later evolved into all the stuff you see today.


Kind of a funny history.

It started out as Justin.tv in 2007 and was a guy named Justin that had a webcam he wore around basically 24/7 and streamed his whole life for a few months. Then he made it so anyone could do the same thing themselves on the website.

But a lot of people were using justin.tv to broadcast their computer screens playing games, and when StarCraft 2 came out in 2010 it got huge. So in 2011 they made a separate site, twitch.tv just for streaming games, and banned gaming on justin.tv, all game streams were transfered over to twitch and justin.tv was just for real life camera stuff.

Then a couple years later they shut down justin.tv because only twitch was making money.

Then a few years later twitch started allowing non-gaming stuff. And now twitch has almost as much non-gaming stuff as gaming. Basically back to where they started off with one streaming site for everything.


Also they originally sold twitch turbo accounts which you could use to get ad free watching. But when amazon bought them you got that for free with amazon prime. Then a few years later they changed it so you had to buy a twitch turbo account to get ad free watching.
 
sk3tch said:
As much as I am a huge fan of twitch - I looked into "subscribing" because I get tired of the ads and the feed sometimes gets all whack for whatever reason (I have 2.5G fiber so it's not a local connectivity issue). The pricing is so ridiculous I couldn't even justify it. I asked for a gift card for Christmas from my wife (link and all) and she even passed it up. It's $12/mo to get no ads and credits you can throw to your favorite streamers - even if you are a Prime member. It's dumb.
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Just use a VPN to a country that doesn't run ads. Mine is to the Czech Republic and I haven't seen ads in months, and same as you I pretty much leave a stream running on a second monitor whenever Im at my PC.

Without a VPN, you can try these. Firefox worked better than chrome, when I tried playing the adblock whack-a-mole game with them. They're getting seriously aggressive about circumventing adblockers, which is why I just gave up and used a VPN that's worked flawlessly.

https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions
 
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cageymaru said:
Twitch does not see a reason to invest in the platform to innovate and make it better for viewers / performers because of a lack of strong competition in the streaming space. Blame the competing companies and their reasoning that you stated for the predicament that streaming is in now. :)
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Twitch owns a large chunk of the streaming mindshare. And I don't think they are getting from it what they could be. But, I also don't feel like they (Amazon) really wants to have what they bought.

There are a lot of smart content creators out there, often lamenting the lack of features. Limited UI. Limited functionality. And how the current setup makes it extremely difficult for small streamers to be noticed. Sure, it would take some investment to make these changes and they would also need to upsize their infrastructure to support the growth. But, there would be a lot of growth.

But, there is also a lot of responsibility Twitch is mostly avoiding, when it comes to streaming rights for-----whatever a person may want to stream. I think there is a lot more that could be done there, to make it easier for streamers and more enjoyable for viewers. But, Twitch doesn't seem to want to play ball (it would likely cost them money and lots of hours of negotiations). So, you get dumb shit, like the entire credits sequence of Portal being muted. Because the company whom owns the distro rights for the song itself, I guess thinks they can also claim ownership over that portion of the game.

A point I'm implying here, is that they could use those 500 employees, if they wanted to.

They do actually have a pretty strong competitor, with Discord. I mean, Discord isn't even close to taking the whole market away from Twitch. But, A LOT of people do stream exclusively to their Discord groups. Rather than publicly to Twitch.

And in my opinion, if someone really wanted to and had the money to back it, streaming could be steered away from Twitch. Twitch isn't really THAT good. I've said it before, but Microsoft was very stupid to ditch Mixer so early. But we then also talked about how MS seemingly ditches many things, which aren't near immediately, totally successful.
 
OFaceSIG said:
Maybe I'm a grumpy old man (43), but twitch seemed like a kind of dumb idea from the get go.
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I don't really get it either. I mean I do (I am 32), but I guess I'd rather play a game than watch someone play a game? If I am stuck somewhere and need a video then I'll probably look that up rather then watch someone play a game for 4 hours?

I guess maybe it's background noise for some people? I don't know. I really don't get it either.
 
chameleoneel said:
Twitch owns a large chunk of the streaming mindshare. And I don't think they are getting from it what they could be. But, I also don't feel like they (Amazon) really wants to have what they bought.

There are a lot of smart content creators out there, often lamenting the lack of features. Limited UI. Limited functionality. And how the current setup makes it extremely difficult for small streamers to be noticed. Sure, it would take some investment to make these changes and they would also need to upsize their infrastructure to support the growth. But, there would be a lot of growth.

But, there is also a lot of responsibility Twitch is mostly avoiding, when it comes to streaming rights for-----whatever a person may want to stream. I think there is a lot more that could be done there, to make it easier for streamers and more enjoyable for viewers. But, Twitch doesn't seem to want to play ball (it would likely cost them money and lots of hours of negotiations). So, you get dumb shit, like the entire credits sequence of Portal being muted. Because the company whom owns the distro rights for the song itself, I guess thinks they can also claim ownership over that portion of the game.

A point I'm implying here, is that they could use those 500 employees, if they wanted to.

They do actually have a pretty strong competitor, with Discord. I mean, Discord isn't even close to taking the whole market away from Twitch. But, A LOT of people do stream exclusively to their Discord groups. Rather than publicly to Twitch.

And in my opinion, if someone really wanted to and had the money to back it, streaming could be steered away from Twitch. Twitch isn't really THAT good. I've said it before, but Microsoft was very stupid to ditch Mixer so early. But we then also talked about how MS seemingly ditches many things, which aren't near immediately, totally successful.
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I agree with you many times over. Streaming is still in its infancy right now. There are so many features that could be implemented into Twitch to interact with the stream using an Alexa command for example. Say you were doing something hands on and wanted to send a clap emote to the streamer you are watching. Obviously Amazon knows you are logged in and which stream you are watching. Why not integrate Echo devices to send emotes into chat? Or verbally tell Twitch to clip the last 30 seconds of the stream for a highlight or use the clip to ask the streamer what they meant during a podcast / radio show?

Those are just small ideas. I also think some of those 500 employees could have helped to implement new tech for the platform. I think this round of tech layoffs is monkey see; monkey do. Companies will just hire new employees laid off from other firms at a discount.
 
sharknice said:
Yes. Twitch started in 2011 so you already achieved your grumpy old man status when you were 30.

It was mainly used for competitive StarCraft 2 back then, so if you weren't into StarCraft you probably didn't care. It later evolved into all the stuff you see today.


Kind of a funny history.

It started out as Justin.tv in 2007 and was a guy named Justin that had a webcam he wore around basically 24/7 and streamed his whole life for a few months. Then he made it so anyone could do the same thing themselves on the website.

But a lot of people were using justin.tv to broadcast their computer screens playing games, and when StarCraft 2 came out in 2010 it got huge. So in 2011 they made a separate site, twitch.tv just for streaming games, and banned gaming on justin.tv, all game streams were transfered over to twitch and justin.tv was just for real life camera stuff.

Then a couple years later they shut down justin.tv because only twitch was making money.

Then a few years later twitch started allowing non-gaming stuff. And now twitch has almost as much non-gaming stuff as gaming. Basically back to where they started off with one streaming site for everything.


Also they originally sold twitch turbo accounts which you could use to get ad free watching. But when amazon bought them you got that for free with amazon prime. Then a few years later they changed it so you had to buy a twitch turbo account to get ad free watching.
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I watched Justin.tv quite a lot back in the day, then fell out of it and forgot the site even existed. It was only recently that I learned that Twitch is what used to be Justin.tv. It was kind of like learning that a childhood friend you mostly forgot about went on to become a movie star, and you didn't realize they were the same person until much later.
 
There is virtually zero reason that I would tune in and watch someone on Twitch... its the same reason that I hate a lot of Youtube content that other people love. Its normal people (often dumb but they say silly things) doing normal things that I do myself. The videos with content I need are 99% fluff and 1% content... these are usually tasks that dont have clear instructions so Im hoping someone else made a video of that step before I just wing it.
 
Sir Beregond said:
I don't really get it either. I mean I do (I am 32), but I guess I'd rather play a game than watch someone play a game? If I am stuck somewhere and need a video then I'll probably look that up rather then watch someone play a game for 4 hours?

I guess maybe it's background noise for some people? I don't know. I really don't get it either.
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People watch Twitch because they themselves can't play video games, either because they are working or because they're really bad at playing games. Also, most of the popular Twitch streamers have huge tits, so there's that. At one point Twitch steamers were just watching full length movies which was a huge copyright mess. It's also a way for people to determine if this is a game they'd like to play or not, because $70 games are becoming huge investments.

View: https://youtu.be/CgkRrhODrXE?si=VN52PMxTjEYLII4i
 
Tengis said:
There is virtually zero reason that I would tune in and watch someone on Twitch... its the same reason that I hate a lot of Youtube content that other people love. Its normal people (often dumb but they say silly things) doing normal things that I do myself. The videos with content I need are 99% fluff and 1% content... these are usually tasks that dont have clear instructions so Im hoping someone else made a video of that step before I just wing it.
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FWIW: I also don't really watch Twitch. I did for a very short period of time, but anyway.

I'll just say it really depends on the Stream/Streamer. I think the Twitch stuff most worth watching is Pros or Semi-Pros play stuff. EG: if you're into StarCraft, a good chunk of pro players stream themselves playing and it's mostly content. Those dudes practice for 5+ hours a day, so they may as well get Twitch payments out of it too.

Another community to watch is the speed run community. There's a lot of people that stream every run they do, as you may (or may not) know, it's a numbers game, practicing over and over until hopefully you get that record breaking run.

But yeah, most of the slice of life stuff and the stuff that's about "personalities" isn't that great.
 
Happy to see this.

Folks popular on twitch have an oversized and negative impact on the gaming community as a whole.
 
Liqq said:
47 here and frankly I've never understood the appeal of watching others play videogames much less paying to watch them play videogames.
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I've watched some here and there - some folks are genuinely entertaining. It's half the game, half listening to someone with either insight or humor.

And then also big boobs is a thing.
 
DukenukemX said:
Also, most of the popular Twitch streamers have huge tits, so there's that.
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This is definitely not true.

Being one of the thousand skanks that yearns for 100 viewers hardly even puts you on the radar as the faintest blip - they aren't popular, they're way at the bottom in the grand scheme of it. The big names clock multiple thousands to multiple tens of thousands easily.

Statistically it looks like women may have the easier time starting out, that's literally a reason someone might click by in the first place.

But it's pretty male dominated at the higher end.
 
I think if you are old enough to have grown in a era where there was much more players than computer-console/tv around, you did watch other enough to be able to understand the possible appeal, having done it yourself.

For some game that are e-sport it is more obvious, like watching sport instead of playing it.
 
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socK said:
This is definitely not true.

Being one of the thousand skanks that yearns for 100 viewers hardly even puts you on the radar as the faintest blip - they aren't popular, they're way at the bottom in the grand scheme of it. The big names clock multiple thousands to multiple tens of thousands easily.

Statistically it looks like women may have the easier time starting out, that's literally a reason someone might click by in the first place.

But it's pretty male dominated at the higher end.
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My Twitch follow list is nearly all male. The one streamer I have that is female is TotalBiscuit's (aka The Cynical Brit) widow.

Female streamers tend to get people in the door at a whim, but I don't think most stick around for the long haul. It's an almost impossible hill to climb to the top if you're that demographic.

I don't think viewer age has anything to do with it either. You either get it or you don't. I'm 48 and I love Twitch for what it is. It's a different form of entertainment. It slots right there in with surfing YouTube. Twitch chat doesn't care if you're 25 or 85. Most viewers lurk anyway.
 
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