The rise and fall of Game Livestream platform in Indonesia
Getting paid while playing games sounds like a dream isn’t it?
Those dream are real for some people in the gaming industry. There are hundreds of jobs that actually making money from playing games in the industry.
but I will share my opinion regarding specific job that can earn enormous amount of money per month, game streamer.
Global overview
Twitch, Youtube Gaming, Facebook Gaming, are the major player in the global market.
Based on Stream Hatchet report. Pandemic situation is pushing the video game streaming audience to grow to 81% in 2020, while 2021 is only 21% nonetheless, the the global audience for games has grown considerably.
In monetization aspect for streamers all platforms have different offers for the streamers. Twitch & Facebook is known to sign exclusive contracts to tons of streamers while Youtube is only known to sign only few exclusive contracts to famous streamers such as Pewdiepie, Valkyrae, CouRage, and other few big names.
Over the last several years, many content creators have been signing exclusive deals as platforms try to lock up talent.
While I personally do not know the details of the exclusive contracts, but based on the recent leaks for Twitch.tv payouts the numbers is so enormous.
Keep in mind that these numbers is only payouts from the platform(subs revenue shares, donation, ads revenue shares), most of the famous streamers have also gained money from sponsors and paid-promote content.
Microsoft Mixer’s failure
Twitch is no doubt the king for global market, the major reason is because the platform is exclusively built for game livestreaming, while Facebook and Youtube mainly focused on other features.
There are other competition for a platform that is exclusively built for game livestreaming and is owned by tech giant Microsoft, Mixer
Mixer, a game streaming service that earlier known as Beam and later rebranded to Mixer which was acquired by Microsoft in 2016. a good read that written by Kaushik G that you can read here regarding the failure of Mixer and i’ll quote part of his opinion.
Microsoft failed to understand the basics of live-streaming platform, which is it’s community driven. Twitch and YouTube have their own communities, with a different sub culture. It took years for both the platforms to develop such a community and therefore stand where they are. A loyal community goes a long way for such a platforms because they constantly interact with the content creators, support them, and buy their merchandises. This helps the creators grow as well as the platform. Microsoft was entirely focused on rolling out xCloud rather than promoting organic talent and growing their viewership which delayed the growth of Mixer and ultimately its demise.
Kaushik also mentioned that “its fair to say that Mixer tried to do everything possible to get a good share of the pie”
One of Mixer biggest move was signing exclusive contract to the most popular streamer from Twitch at the time Tyler Belvins a.k.a Ninja and also Michael Grzesiek aka Shroud, some of the reports said that their exclusive contracts is amounted to US$10 Million and some as big as US$30 Million.
The move does bring a lot of viewership when it started but it does not bring the community that has been built for years by Twitch. Ninja and Shroud streamed in Mixer was only around for one year and a half, Mixer decided to shutdown their operations. While Ninja and Shroud going back to Twitch, some of Mixer streamers are moving to Facebook gaming with new contracts.
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Most of the platform mentioned above is making money through ads, subscription, and also donation cut from fans to the streamers.
Twitch.tv is doing a really good job with their Prime Gaming subcription & Ads.
Indonesia Game Livestream Platform
The early Era (2015)
I remember way back in 2015, I have tried several times to become a game streamer (I am still trying though ✌️). These are the times that livestreaming platform emerging in Indonesia, one of them is Cliponyu, there are other competition such as Siaranku at the time as well.
These Livestream platform initially started as Liveshow platform for host to engage with their fans and as time goes they added gaming section. But eventually most of them failed, I can think of many reasons why but I believe there are two major reasons:
- The platform failed to secure ads, or decided to not using ads as revenue for their platform.
- Limitation of payment methods in these era, most of the platform is relying on donation cuts from audience to the host or streamers. While topping up your donation credits in that era in Indonesia is quite the hassle
With the recent trend of digital wallet few years back, its pretty much a solution for reason number #2.
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The Talent War Era (2017–2020)
With the rising online audience and widespread internet infrastructure across Indonesia. Many foreign company entered Indonesia market bringing huge capital and launched gaming exclusive livestream platform, Their strategy was trying to lock up as much talent or game streamer as possible, Exclusivity deals.
CubeTV, Streamcraft, Game.ly, NimoTV, Facebook Gaming. These are the major platform that I know of participated in these exclusivity contract war. All of the platform competing with huge amount of capital to sign Top esports organizations, Famous celebrities that play games, huge social media influencers, Major & Minor Tournaments broadcast license. Some rumor that I heard there are deals that exceeds US$160.000 for 6 months exclusivity streamer contract. The Market Value inflated so much.
Game.ly signed Atta halilintar sometime in 2018, Currently Atta has the biggest Youtube Subscriber in South East Asia with almost 30 Millions subscribers. Back then he is considered as one of top rising stars as well, no reports or rumor that I know of how much the contracts goes. But to convince a rising stars should cost quite a lot of money.
It was a huge win for audiences & streamers, Audiences have a lot of platforms and streamers to entertain them. While streamers, earning tons of money from the livestreaming platforms based on their performances, monthly salary, donations.
But eventually, most of the livestreaming platform shut downs their operations. Either they run out of capital, shifting directions, exiting Indonesia market or other reasons.
Audiences & Streamers were left with NimoTV & Facebook Gaming.
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The Current Era (2020-Now)
NimoTV has become the current Leader of livestreaming platform for gamers in Indonesia market, in the past year some of the major streamer from Facebook Gaming has moved to NimoTV while still maintaining most of the broadcast license and high payout streamers including esports organizations which remained from the unhealthy talent war Inflated market .
The community that they build for the past few years is going strong, and I am part of the community itself, we can refer to Kaushik opinion above about mixer failure regarding ‘community driven’ which is the basic of livestreaming platforms. There are few new competitor that entered the market as well, but reflecting to the Talent War Era and the failure of Mixer, I personally doubt that the new competitor will try to compete with the inflated market, and will comes out with other strategy.
There are other streaming platform like Youtube, one of the most famous Indonesian streamer there is Windah Basudara with average Concurrent viewers of 50.000. But as stated above, Youtube has only signed exclusive contracts for very few streamers. Those making the only income for Windah Basudara is from youtube paid member subscription(which he did not activated), Donation (he does not accept donation as well), Adsense and Paid-promote sponsors content.
While NimoTV still offer good amount of money based on the streamers performance, thus makes NimoTV a better option for Majority of the streamers.
In terms of monetization, as far as I know, their main source is through Donation & Subscription on each streamers pages. They did quite a good job for each event that requiring the audiences to support the streamers through donations and some kind of activities.
With little to no competition after approximately 3 years, NimoTV need to revisit their strategy (which they are currently working on) to deflate the market and earn more revenue, add more monetization such as advertisements or premium membership like Twitch did. There is no point to burn huge amount of money every month with the current situations.
Platforms plays very important role in the esports or gaming ecosystem. That makes platforms will never be eliminated from the ecosystem.
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What does it means for streamers & esports organizations when the market deflate or even stop paying money(except ads sharing revenue like youtube)?
The current income for esports organizations in Indonesia from livestreaming platforms payouts can take as much as 10% ~ 50% of their total revenue per year. Revenue from streaming platform is unique to esports, traditional sports doesnt really have this kind of options they are still making lots of money. esports organizations need to come with new plans for revenue stream.
While for streamers, only around 20% of the existing streamers have social media presence or content outside of their livestreaming content or platforms and I barely see streamers In Indonesia with sponsors deals like Twitch streamers with PC Component brand, Energy drink and so on. That makes almost 80% of the existing streamers will lose almost 80% of their revenue(roughly 20% is from donations and ads-revenue sharing if available). Unless they expand their contents and social media presence, they(full time streamers, as a main job) will suffer a great impact.
Jika tidak ada livestreaming platform yang membayar seperti di era Talent War maka 80% dari streamers yang tidak memiliki konten atau angka social media yang besar akan menjadi abang-abang biasa.