The battle between Twitch and YouTube has only just begun

The battle between Twitch and YouTube has only just begun

YouTube, the once silent behemoth in Twitch’s midst, is starting to make some noise. At the beginning of the month, it swiped two live-streaming stars, Ben “DrLupo” Lupo and Tim “TimTheTatman” Betar, with significantly better offers than the Amazon-owned live-streaming platform was willing to make. Now many streamers, fatigued by the Twitch-centric status quo, are looking on with intrigue: Can YouTube end Twitch’s reign of live-streaming dominance? Should they too jump ship?To get more news about 39bet-tỷ lệ cược-đua ngựa-máy bắn cá-tỷ lệ nhà cái-kéo cầu tài xỉu, you can visit official website.

Unlike previous Twitch competitors that made waves — like Microsoft’s now-defunct platform Mixer — YouTube is gargantuan, with a total user base of more than 2 billion. Though the total user base of Twitch is unknown it boasts 140 million active users per month. But Twitch is still responsible for 65 percent of live-streaming hours watched, and there’s no guarantee that even YouTube can put a dent in that. (Twitch is owned by Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)

However, as far as YouTube Gaming head Ryan Wyatt is concerned, that’s not even really the goal. YouTube, he explained, is structured differently from Twitch because it allows creators to grow their channels by doing more than just streaming all the time — they can also upload regular videos, stories, shorts and VODs — which means that, as far as he’s concerned, YouTube Gaming is not directly competing with Twitch.
“When you look at live watch time, it is kind of a secondary market from a content consumption standpoint,” Wyatt said. “The vast majority of video consumption is happening on [video on demand] and short form, but live is so intriguing because it’s really interactive. It brings these rich content experiences you can’t ever get in VODs and shorts. That’s why I think it’s important, but I don’t look at it as the reason we’re getting into it is that it’s this hypergrowth, massive business.”

Despite Lupo’s and Betar’s clout, Twitch could afford to let them go. They were good for the brand, but likely not massive cash cows in the traditional sense. On top of that, there are still hundreds of other big streamers on Twitch to whom viewers can migrate. While Betar, especially, has enjoyed enormous success in his move to YouTube — pulling in over 100,000 concurrent viewers in his first stream and gaining nearly 20,000 paid subscribers after just two days — the net impact on Twitch’s overall viewership numbers has been negligible.

However, Lupo and Betar both share similar communities and taste in games that are compatible not just with each other, but with other popular YouTube streamers like Jack “CouRage” Dunlop and Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beahm. Already, the four have collaborated while playing games like “Call of Duty: Warzone,” creating a much more visible flash point than they could have individually and attracting millions of viewers. If Twitch loses more streamers who, together, are greater than the sum of their parts, it could begin to see its own hegemony erode. The questions now are which additional big names will Twitch ultimately let go and how (or even if) that will begin to impact the platform in more visible ways.

But there are other near-term impacts to consider. Lupo and Betar’s moves come at a time when streamers’ confidence in Twitch is at an all-time low. Betar announced his departure on the same day as thousands of streamers were participating in #ADayOffTwitch, a boycott movement started by marginalized streamers fed up with the Twitch-wide epidemic of “hate raids,” in which harassers use bots and dummy accounts to fill streamers’ chats with hateful messages. While streamers protested against Twitch’s relative silence in the face of hate raids, Wyatt spent the day replying to dozens of tweets from streamers and viewers curious about YouTube Gaming’s plans. It was a stark contrast, though admittedly, Twitch and YouTube were dealing with very different situations (Twitch has since sued two users allegedly responsible for orchestrating hate raids). Proponents of hashtags like #ADayOffTwitch have also advocated for diversification of streamers’ income — for streamers to test the waters of other platforms to ensure that they’re at least maximizing their income while dealing with poor treatment. Taken in conjunction, these events resulted in many Twitch streamers wondering if they too should make the leap to YouTube, even if nobody is offering them a multimillion-dollar contract.