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Techcrunch: Twitch streamers grew 67% in Q3, Youtube Gaming declines
- Thread starter Futursu
- Start date
Should have posted this one as well.
Longtime live stream viewer here and regarding international platforms, I definitely prefer Twitch. They had some pretty bad period right before Amazon acquired them (lots of lags, unstable streams etc) but after that they improved a lot in that regard. They still lack a lot of features though and despite stealing from various platforms...those aren't always useful to the viewers at least. Their dress code policy was also pretty hypocritical until they eventually removed it again and now some streams are worse than ever.
Longtime live stream viewer here and regarding international platforms, I definitely prefer Twitch. They had some pretty bad period right before Amazon acquired them (lots of lags, unstable streams etc) but after that they improved a lot in that regard. They still lack a lot of features though and despite stealing from various platforms...those aren't always useful to the viewers at least. Their dress code policy was also pretty hypocritical until they eventually removed it again and now some streams are worse than ever.
Croatoan
They/Them A-10 Warthog
Youtube is a failing business. Google loses a lot of money on it, doubt they find that comfortable.
It is true their streaming side is declining faster than the video side.
Well...otherwise those streamers that are essentially "cam whores" wouldn't be a thing.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
What did they change it to?
GribbleGrunger
Dreams in Digital
Well, Youtube streaming WILL decline when they constantly demonetise or ban sites that have a different political opinion to those that run the site. Add in the fact they're demonetising gaming sites all the time, and you have a recipe for migration.
franknbeans
Member
Cleavage, cleavage, and more cleavage
This is a worrying development for me as a European who rarely gets to watch US streamers, including the people I've been following for years on youtube, do their thing live.
News like this makes me feel like I'm getting more and more out of sync with the larger global gaming community that originated on the always-on, geographical border-crossing internet, especially when people are gravitating towards live content and participation and this in turn results in borders and time zones quickly starting to become a limiting factor again for many of us in terms of being able to be present when things are happening.
I also worry about how much gaming content will continue to shift from highly produced and edited, actually researched and scripted videos to unscripted, unedited gameplay footage constantly interrupted by new subscriber and donation acknowledgements. Sometimes the latter is what I seek, for instance when I want to share the excitement of a new game release close to its release, but more often than not I want the former, less and all of that is on youtube (as far as I know).
In short, I can only hope game streaming won't completely replace youtube game content but will instead keep supplementing it. There is a place for both and live content is not always the best content for all potential viewers.
News like this makes me feel like I'm getting more and more out of sync with the larger global gaming community that originated on the always-on, geographical border-crossing internet, especially when people are gravitating towards live content and participation and this in turn results in borders and time zones quickly starting to become a limiting factor again for many of us in terms of being able to be present when things are happening.
I also worry about how much gaming content will continue to shift from highly produced and edited, actually researched and scripted videos to unscripted, unedited gameplay footage constantly interrupted by new subscriber and donation acknowledgements. Sometimes the latter is what I seek, for instance when I want to share the excitement of a new game release close to its release, but more often than not I want the former, less and all of that is on youtube (as far as I know).
In short, I can only hope game streaming won't completely replace youtube game content but will instead keep supplementing it. There is a place for both and live content is not always the best content for all potential viewers.
KyanMehwulfe
Member
Youtube has been pretty late on features... Or, uncertainty about features that they used previously and were removed this year, e.g. paid content. They just recently [and finally] added sponsorships though so it'll be more interesting to see how the traffic responds to that.
That said, Youtube has also been pretty strict and live streaming/YT gaming is the first thing they axed. I've been banned from live streaming 2x (both 3 month bans) because of "sexual content" in other videos. First one was the sex scene in Witcher 3 Hearts of Stone, despite there being dozens of videos with far more views showing the same thing. Second was for picking up a prostitute in GTA 5 (likewise), no nudity for sexually explicit.
That sort of behaviour about what content you show, whether it's anything 'Mature' [rated] from GTA, from horror games, or just violence from FPS games -- any of those risk getting banned for 3 months, however low the risk may be. And that sort of uncertainty probably hinders people considering switching from Twitch to YT ... at least for their streaming. They'll still upload to YT (uploading doesn't get banned, as streaming does, for your first strike) but probably feel safer streaming on Twitch.
Plus, as said, YT is still barely just catching up. They just added super chat with summer, and it's still worse that paid 'donation' emojis on Twitch, and they only just added sponsorships a month or so ago.
That said, if you're new it's probably easier to break onto YT gaming because YT is pretty generous with putting new channels that have just a couple 'popular' (in terms of views) videos as recommended videos. Not daily but prob a few times I week I see pretty small channels get recommended, or highlighted as 'live' if I'm looking for longplays, and they'd likely never get that break on Twitch.
That said, Youtube has also been pretty strict and live streaming/YT gaming is the first thing they axed. I've been banned from live streaming 2x (both 3 month bans) because of "sexual content" in other videos. First one was the sex scene in Witcher 3 Hearts of Stone, despite there being dozens of videos with far more views showing the same thing. Second was for picking up a prostitute in GTA 5 (likewise), no nudity for sexually explicit.
That sort of behaviour about what content you show, whether it's anything 'Mature' [rated] from GTA, from horror games, or just violence from FPS games -- any of those risk getting banned for 3 months, however low the risk may be. And that sort of uncertainty probably hinders people considering switching from Twitch to YT ... at least for their streaming. They'll still upload to YT (uploading doesn't get banned, as streaming does, for your first strike) but probably feel safer streaming on Twitch.
Plus, as said, YT is still barely just catching up. They just added super chat with summer, and it's still worse that paid 'donation' emojis on Twitch, and they only just added sponsorships a month or so ago.
That said, if you're new it's probably easier to break onto YT gaming because YT is pretty generous with putting new channels that have just a couple 'popular' (in terms of views) videos as recommended videos. Not daily but prob a few times I week I see pretty small channels get recommended, or highlighted as 'live' if I'm looking for longplays, and they'd likely never get that break on Twitch.
Dirk Benedict
Gold Member
Twitch has been updating a lot, especially this year. It's not perfect, but it's something I've been used to since 2010. The new Beta is/was ass, but I'm getting used to it, minus the bugs where certain things won't show or take awhile to load.
Youtube has a long way to go if they want people to embrace their games streaming in a similar fashion that they do Twitch.
Youtube has a long way to go if they want people to embrace their games streaming in a similar fashion that they do Twitch.
Huh? Europe is in the best time zone, as they get the Asian streamers in the afternoon and the US streamers in the evening.
Pff, no Simpsons, American Dad etc streams anymore.
IcyRhythms
Member
Youtube's player is better. The quality looks a lot better IMO.
YouTube has enough live channels streaming that stuff 24/7 some even with selectable different subtitles.
"Don't be naked."
KyanMehwulfe
Member
Twitch has pretty low bitrate caps if you're not a partner, IIRC, or they sort of limit it through the encoder? Something about a weaker encoder or a pretty low bitrate limit, like under 6000 kbps. Even for full partners, I think the bitrate was still under 10,000 or something. Non-partners just got 60fps this year, too, and all YT streamers had it before Twitch partners did. But the biggest thing is probably because it gets so much stream traffic, Twitch pushes lower bitrates. Even for partners their high HD/frame rate encoding recommends (or they cap it/limit it via the encoder? not sure) pushing only up to a 6000 bitrate, if I'm reading it right -- I know from before it's pretty low, just double checking the #s.
In contrast, even with default hardware streamer with a PS4 Pro you can probably get up to 20,000-25,000 bitrate at 1080p/60fps on Youtube, and with a capture device to your pc/console, push it over 30,000 bitrate or higher res like 1440p -- if your upload can keep it stable.
Technically, I don't think YT caps the bitrate of your ingestion so you could probably go even higher if you hardware/upload can support it... haven't really watched any 4K streams myself but I don't think on Youtube's end why you could try have a 50k ingestion bitrate.
We were just talking about the old Justin.tv days. Also, Youtube is a mess, in several regards.
WaterAstro
Member
So more streamers, but not viewers? Doesn't sound sustainable.
The YouTube decline isn't that bad.
The YouTube decline isn't that bad.
WaterAstro
Member
Uh Nintendo is the one doing that.
KyanMehwulfe
Member
Yeah... Any pub or dev can do that... And on Twitch, too.
I regularly* got my sound muted on Twitch playing No Man's Sky because Hello Games or most likely 65dayssofstatic (its OST composers) were striking my stream.
(/edit/ *as in, regularly just for a few minutes, but out of every 4-5 hours.... so, it was a small percentage of gameplay, but it regularly happened basically every time I loaded the game or sometimes going to new star systems when the OST would play)
Not sure if Twitch quite has the same mechanism as Youtube so maybe Nintendo would be less effective at stopping streamers there, but I would assume they're trying there as well.
I regularly* got my sound muted on Twitch playing No Man's Sky because Hello Games or most likely 65dayssofstatic (its OST composers) were striking my stream.
(/edit/ *as in, regularly just for a few minutes, but out of every 4-5 hours.... so, it was a small percentage of gameplay, but it regularly happened basically every time I loaded the game or sometimes going to new star systems when the OST would play)
Not sure if Twitch quite has the same mechanism as Youtube so maybe Nintendo would be less effective at stopping streamers there, but I would assume they're trying there as well.
Tom Nook Sawyer
Member
Seriously, this. That's a far more impressive showing than I expected
KyanMehwulfe
Member
I think it's certain games. Probably a lot of GTA5 streamers. Maybe anything that traditionally isn't streamed as much and usually just uploaded as longplay videos... It's cuz your videos will advertise your stream. So, the advantage there I guess of YT Gaming is the extra advertising if you have decent video traffic. Whether it's a funny GTA video or an Anno longplay or just reviews/commentary/etc, streaming on the same site as those videos let's those videos also advertise your stream. (Which, granted, is probably small traffic for major established Twitch streamers, but if you're new, or mostly just upload videos, it's a way to try attract new traffic to your stream.)
E.g. If you're a GTA5 video uploader, e.g. GTAO news or GTA5 Fails, and you're streaming, you're pretty much guaranteed to have your live stream as the top suggested or recommended video for anyone looking at those videos. One of your other videos likely already was, but then that one is probably still just below that -- so you're ending up with taking over more 'sidebar real estate,' basically. You're driving traffic from your popular videos also to your live stream. Twitch does have that little card annotation pop-up but it kinda conflicts with existing cards, and it's just smaller and more subtler than a big 'this person is [Live]' on the side-bar. Works same way even if you're a small longplayers or reviewer: every existing video you have is an extra spot where your stream would have recommended video real estate.
Even personally, I usually don't have many people watching most games on either Twitch or YT Gaming. But... If I stream GTA5, because I have a decent high traffic money making video (just a stock market bug), sometimes (not commonly... just occasionally) that alone puts my stream live on the front page of Youtube ('recommended' in the Gaming section) or 'Kyan is Live' on the side-bar for anyone looking at those videos. Suddenly my shoots up crazy (and ppl asking, why is this on my frontpage) and when I finish streaming the views are 10-20x higher because of the extra traffic from my one popular GTA vid making the stream get recommended.
So, depending on the game, and also your content (e.g. purely streamer, or mostly a video uploader that does streaming for fun), and if you have no established followers or not, both platforms have some advantages.
Yep, that's what it amounts to. Pretty much the perfect example of that:
Honestly I am ok with this. Its a 18+ stream. They are not featured on the main site and if people want to do this or like to watch this why shouldn't they?
Besides this I think Twitch is also great for discovering new games. For example I and 45k other people watched Lirik playing a game called getting over it and it was great. Twitch streamers have now build massive communities with their own rules in place that Publisher and developer can use to get games more popular or introduce new ones.
That's just the stream title. I'm not actually sure if streamers like this ever get featured on the main site since...well, my bookmark obviously wouldn't lead me there.
You do know what we were talking about before, right? And you also do know that Twitch.tv originally split off of Justin.tv to feature gaming-only content?
SprachBrooks
Member
Yep, that's what it amounts to. Pretty much the perfect example of that:
Whats her name? For research purposes.
Edit: I dont see how YouTube with its ContendID system can even be a viable streaming platform anymore. YouTube fucked up.
LichtenbergFigures
Member
pink_sparkles
SprachBrooks
Member
Thanks mate.
vypermajik
Member
I prefer Mixer. Much smaller fan base, but much less toxic chat. I don't like YouTube for anything live, but love YT Red due to poor internet service at work.
Blam
Member
Yeah Mixer has a much more inviting feeling and frankly the streamers are much nicer.
Dirk Benedict
Gold Member
Haha. During Halloween I did run some horror movies, I got about 8 hours or so into a marathon before I was shut down for 24 hours(got off lucky), because I was legit reported. Snitches, pls.
I agree with this, but sometimes the quality of my own stream just gets pristine, for whatever reason. I think it's when they can allocate additional bandwidth or something, similar to how they give non-affiliates, non-sub accounts quality options based on availability and viewer traffic.
Quality options is good to have because it means more people can watch your stream if they don't meet the bandwidth requirements to watch at the best quality.
If you enter a "mature" stream for the first time you always get a warning that this stream features mature content (language, games etc.) I think it is much better than to tell people what they should wear and what they should not. Only rule now is no nudity which is fine.
And no they do not get featured on the Main site and only displayed looking at all the IRL channels. Yes I know this but Justin TV was barely about this. If you wanted to see sexualized content back than you had stickam. Justin TV back than was not much about anything besides streaming TV series, or the beginning of gaming streams.
As for toxic chats. Each Streamer has made their own rules and build their own communities around it. Some will allow it, some will encourage it and some will stomp it out and I think this is the best way to do it.
Youtube:
The biggest problem I have with the streaming is that everytime I switch tabs between the streaming quality drops for a short time and makes it look awful when I get back. I really do not know the reason for it. Also I personally feel no real communities building up like on Twitch. With Twitch channels I follow and often visit I always feel a community behind it and how streamers drive or shape these communities. There is nothing like that on YouTube IMO.
Makes me wonder whether all those people who streamed anime also got banned when Twitch did their Crunchyroll thing.
"Hey, you have to be over 18 to watch the content of this stream." "Sure I am"...said every 13-year-old ever.
Huh? Streaming TV series was pretty small back then. It was only ever one or two Simpsons streams for example and they got taken down periodically. It always had "IRL" streams as well and gaming was there too...just got a lot bigger once the migration from Ustream happened, so that they eventually spun that part off.
synce
Member
Yep, that's what it amounts to. Pretty much the perfect example of that:
Aaand there's your growth. Who doesn't want to make a living doing literally nothing?
phant0m
Member
YouTube is a joke. YT live streams were broken for awhile on Android TV. They made a TV service that didnt have an app for ANY STB, including their own (Android TV). They broke/disabled logins for any brand account in the latest YouTube app overhaul.
Not gonna lie, its kind of annoying how Google half-asses a lot of things then gives up and shuts it down 2 years later.
Not gonna lie, its kind of annoying how Google half-asses a lot of things then gives up and shuts it down 2 years later.
But this kind of warning is totally fine. And since I llive in a country in which Its totally normal to see breasts at 9:00 in the morning on TV I can't say much about it.
I remember that I watched a ton of series like Seinfeld or Cheers there and it never got taken down. Same with genere specific movie streams. All these had way more viewers than the irl people. There were of course exception when some teens decided to stream there and people floked in there asking to show boobs etc. But these got taken down pretty fast. Internet streaming ack than was like the wild west^^
To be fair, it's only part of the reason for the streamer growth. They also attracted streamers from other platforms (Korean, Chinese, Japanese) by copying some features as well as naturally spreading interest.
But then you can't say "it's an 18+ stream" because it really isn't since you can watch it no problem at any age.
It always depended on the rights and who paid attention when. I had a Justin.tv pro account to get bandwidth prioritization to watch certain series by the way. And there weren't many viewers in general anyway, like mostly below 100 for a channel (thus movie/series streams couldn't really have "way more" viewers than other streams). Interestingly enough, livestream and ustream never featured those illegal streams. I guess, since they were more popular (and thus had more staff), they didn't get as much attention?
That's the 1st time I heard of that site.
AzureSkies
Member
It has a really nice community. I've streamed on it for Extra Life for two years now and every time I have had people coming into the chat and asking questions, talking with us etc. It's been great.