Twitch "isn't profitable" admits CEO, in wake of recent layoffs - eviltoast
  • ampersandrew@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    Maybe a few more ads in the middle of the thing I’m trying to watch, with no way to pause or rewind to catch what I missed, will do the trick.

    • _sideffect@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      When did that start? I used to be on Twitch 4-5 years ago, but never went back since then.

      I don’t remember ads at all back then

      • ampersandrew@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        Ads used to be run at the streamers’ discretion, and they were beaten by adblock. Now adblock doesn’t work on Twitch, because they did the smart thing and embedded them into the stream. Also, a few years back, even though streamers have an incentive to run ads, because they benefit from it too, Twitch implemented mandatory thresholds for number of ads that need to be run or else you lose access to some tier of monetization, so most streamers leave it on auto pilot now. It means that whenever the same stream is running on YouTube, I’m watching on YouTube so I don’t miss anything.

        • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          I mostly watch YouTube streamers. Once in a while they’ll do a Twitch stream and holy shit it’s night and day. 0 ads on YouTube and 30 second and even sometimes 1 minute unskippable ads constantly interrupting the stream on Twitch. I honestly have no idea how people put up with it. I cancelled cable because I didn’t want to watch ads, I’m not going to a site that does the same.

        • fsxylo@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          My adblock blocks the ads, but I still get that stupid purple screen. What really annoys me is that it’s a minute and a half long. Twitch really wants me to disable ad block so I look at an ad on a Livestream for almost two fucking minutes.

          I minimize and do something else until then but that’s asinine.

  • SomeGuy69@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I simply don’t believe this. They probably don’t count all the gamers, who get Amazon prime for all the twitch loot. Then you also have people who throw around subs like confetti. Thot streams.

    • Aabbcc@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      I simply don’t believe this.

      Best financial analysis I’ve ever heard. But maybe look up video hosting and streaming costs before speculating so confidently?

  • stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Oh please they couldn’t fucking handle moderation I don’t trust them to handle fucking money either.

    Let it rot

    • Xin_shill@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      They pay themselves for infrastructure costs effectively, so it would be the wholesale price. Would love to see their actual accounting book, public data says they made 2.8 billion, would love to see where it went.

      • 4am@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        I’ve heard (yes anecdotal) that on the books, Twitch pays AWS full retail for server time.

        Makes me wonder if that’s done on purpose? Amazon just wants to kill Twitch and rent out IVS (their internal system) to other streaming platforms (like they do for Kick). THAT is outside money coming in.

      • Endorkend@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        Imho you’re wrong there.

        Amazon has every incentive to write down Twitches infrastructure cost as far higher than it needs to be, to make Twitch look unprofitable.

        Both to audience and shareholders. It’ll allow them to force more advertising and push up sub prices while making the main corporation revenue look better.

        This while the long term plan looks to be more about getting an excuse to shut down the public facing side of Twitch and get rid of having to deal with the streamers and viewers as direct clients and renting out streaming infrastructure to other streaming sites instead.

        They want to condense their streaming services to simply be simple products they can sell or rent out to other sites rather than having to deal with a load of consumers and legal liabilities that come with them.

        • arin@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Well, until they can beat YouTube live and their game streaming there they have to compete still

    • MysticKetchup@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Data is surprisingly cheap. It’s more than likely just reinvesting any profits into growth to boost stock price/investment. A lot of companies are hitting the point where growth is leveling off, so they’ve switched to cutting costs

  • feoh@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    Former Amazon employee here - Twitch is IMO a perfect example of Amazon tactics. Acquire, ignore, drain the engineering team down to a skeleton crew, further en- 💩 -ify the platform, and then wonder why profits are dwindling.

  • kingthrillgore@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    You know what that means: Gifting a sub with Prime is about to go away and so are all the loot drops with Prime. Also, more no opt out ads, longer preroll ads, and a larger list of partnered games getting headway.

    So you know typical enshittification stuff.

  • xkforce@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    If you are bad at your job, you lose your job. If the CEO is bad at their job, you lose your job. If the CEO is REALLY bad at their job, they get a golden parachute.

  • Kras Mazov@lemmygrad.ml
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    10 months ago

    Fucking doubt it. This is just an excuse for the layoffs. All the big streamers have tons and tons of subs, a lot of users have Twitch Prime since it’s so cheap and they show multiple unskippable ads all the time. Plus, they are owned by Amazon and use their server infrastructure. This is 100% bullshit.

  • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    I’ve never understood the appeal of watching twitch streams, I enjoy the edited compiled stuff with all the boring moments cut out that ends up on YouTube sometimes, but I see no point in watching a dude eating and drinking and staring at his monitor and shouting out to viewers.

        • cum@lemmy.cafe
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          10 months ago

          I know that was a really stupid controversy, but definitely doesn’t mean it’s a neo nazi sure lol

          • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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            10 months ago

            No but it’s one in a long history of siding with the most fickle and destructive of the userbase. Nobody was asking them to make a big deal out of cracker, not even actual neo nazis give a shit about cracker beyond its use as a tool to bad-faith shut down people they don’t like.

            This was a time when actual slurs were being thrown around completely unmoderated, famously saying that ret–d was allowed, which is an apt descriptor for what taking that stance and then proceeding to ban a bunch of their biggest left streamers for a discussing a mild slur was. It didn’t appease the people it was supposed to appease, all it did was drive away even more of the less politically repugnant users.

            • cum@lemmy.cafe
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              10 months ago

              I was there for the drama too. It was hilarious the people crying racism for saying cracker, and the immediately follow up with the r word the same day. Mostly the Destiny guys who intentionally are bad faith basement dwellers. It was fucked up because they gave zero context about the word and grouped it up with racial slurs like the n word, which is completely racist to do that. So I definitely agree with you there. I mean we both know why, it’s because the website is 90% white males.