The streaming race heats up
Microsoft takes a big step to challenge Amazon and Google in the competition to become the most popular video game streaming platform, a market suffering many of the same tensions as all digital content.
As our CEO Guido Farji explained a few months ago, nowadays watching people play video games is an activity as important as playing them yourself. “From mass events to live broadcasts, commented videos and other content, it is a mass spectacle”, he said.
About 400 million people watch streams and, during this year’s second quarter, they viewed over 3.77 billion hours.
Just like any other medium that gets enough attention, platforms designed to broadcast and watch gameplays make large amounts of money. Their economy is based on subscriptions, donations and advertising, and they allow content creators to monetize their transmissions.
Amazon’s Twitch leads the segment and gets 72% of viewing hours. YouTube follows with 72% and Facebook Gaming with 5%. Last is Mixer, a site that Microsoft bought in 2016 and is trying to build up. In 2018 its user base grew 195%, but it still represents 3% of the market.
Nevertheless, a couple weeks ago everything changed thanks to this young man.
A new competitor hits jackspot
Tyler “Ninja” Blevins is a gaming superstar. With over 22 million followers on YouTube and 14 million on Twitch, he is able to make a living out of it. Last year he was on the cover of ESPN Magazine, an emblem of mainstream sports.
On August 1st, Blevins left Twitch and signed an exclusive contract with Mixer. The news hit the gaming world like a bomb: some said it’s as if Messi announced tomorrow that he’s playing for Real Madrid. It seems Ninja got a seven figure sum for the pass.
With this hot new asset and a two-month free subscription, Mixer seeks to attract new users and consolidate its place in the industry. It seems to be working: Blevins got 1 million subscribers in the first five days and as of mid-August he has over 14 million.
There is yet to see if the site manages to retain them, and if that is enough to compete with Twitch, that has 10X as many active users (100 million a month versus 10 million).
Stream workers
Blevins is the king of streaming but he works 12 hours a day. He says the longest vacation he’s taken was his 6-day-long honeymoon, and every time he takes a break he knows he’s losing 200 to 300 followers an hour.
Maybe with this new deal he’ll be able to take it easier, but these sites have certain conditions you have to meet in order to monetize your channel, like a minimum of subscribers and monthly broadcast hours.
Streamers have proven they know how to choose the most convenient deal (that’s why Twitch became more popular than YouTube, after all), but the scene is getting more and more competitive. At Mixer, they compete with 69.000 other content creators, while at Twitch there are 1.5 million, and it’s increasingly difficult to stand out.
Can we have nice things?
Just 10 days after Ninja’s polite departure from Twitch, the drama began. In lieu of his channel, the platform had set up a selection of recommended streams, and last Sunday there was porn on it. Blevin voiced his disapproval, pointing out that many of his followers are children and teenagers.
This is one of the problems that often come up in any social network. Content creators, advertisers and users demand a “safe” environment, free from inappropriate messages and violence. Websites attempt to moderate content, but their criteria are often opaque and their ability to react is limited by the scale and the speed of it all. As it usually happens, the more money is on the line, the more tense these discussions.
According to users, Mixer has thus far a more peaceful, cordial atmosphere than other platforms, but we shall see if it manages to stay that way as it grows.
