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Twitch updates security for its TwitchCon event following the Jacksonville esports shooting
Twitch is today announcing changes to its security procedures for its TwitchCon event taking place in San Jose, California on October 26-28. The update follows news of the tragic shooting at an esports event in Jacksonville, Florida last month where three people died, including the shooter, and 11 were injured. Twitch said it would review its procedures as a result, and would soon have more information about what it’s doing to keep attendees safe.
Today, the company shared those plans.
Our highest priority at TwitchCon is attendee safety and security. We want to assure you that we are adding additional security measures on top of past event measures. We will have more detailed information on TwitchCon security in the coming days so stay tuned!
— TwitchCon 2018 (@TwitchCon) September 12, 2018
According to Twitch, it’s working with San Jose’s local law enforcement, convention staff and additional security services on the event.
The conference will include bag searches and screenings at designated entrance points, and attendees will be limited to carrying just one bag.
The bag can be no larger than 12” x 15” x 6”, the company says.
Backpacks, luggage, large bags and bulky clothing will not be allowed. In addition, backpacks acquired at the show — even those that are Twitch-branded — will not be eligible for re-entry. There will be an on-site bag check available, but the company suggests that larger bags be left at home as space will be limited.
It says small fanny packs or clear bags will help attendees move through the security checkpoints faster.
Meanwhile, exhibitors will only be able to hand-carry their products and display materials in oversized bags and rollers before 8 AM on show days — that way there won’t be a way for people to bring in large bags when the event is underway.
Press will also have to wear their press badges, and crews that need to carry their large camera equipment will need to be approved.
Of course, the event has a no weapons policy as well, and anyone in violation will be removed without refund.
Badges must be worn at all times, and an ID or passport needs to be on hand, as well.
At first glance, the updated procedures don’t seem remarkably different from Twitch’s earlier policies.
The company’s security plan before Jacksonville had also included bag searches, walk-through or hand-held scanners, the use of uniformed guards, ID checks and the wearing of badges.
The biggest on-record change appears to be the backpack ban.
However, we understand the reference to Twitch’s closer work with law enforcement services and the “additional security services” is a reference to other changes that may not have been fully detailed. (We’d guess this is likely because Twitch doesn’t want to provide too much information to anyone trying to workaround its security procedures.)
The annual TwitchCon event brings together the Twitch community to play games, watch live esports, participate in hackathons and cosplay contests, attend sessions and hear from the company about what’s next for the live game-streaming service.
Last fall, for example, Twitch unveiled a new set of tools at TwitchCon that would allow creators to make money from their online channels.
However, the events in Jacksonville have had many of TwitchCon’s regular attendees concerned about event safety.
After all, the video game competition, taking place at the GLHF Game Bar in Jacksonville, Florida, had been live-streamed on Twitch when the shooting happened. Would a copycat try to get into Twitch’s conference?, some have wondered.
According to reports, the Florida shooter had been upset about losing two games of Madden earlier in the tournament, even refusing to shake hands with the winner after one game. Despite a history of mental illness, the shooter had been able to legally acquire his weapons. It wasn’t clear how he got them into the Jacksonville bar.
Sadly, mass shootings in the U.S. have now taken place at schools, movie theaters, churches, concerts, workplaces — even at YouTube — and elsewhere. But they had not yet before occurred at an esports event.
The tragic event brought attention on the esports industry as a whole, which still sits somewhere outside of mainstream attention, despite Twitch having more than 2 million broadcasters and 15 million viewers who tune in daily to watch.
We are shocked and saddened by the tragedy that took place in Jacksonville today. Twitch and all its staff send our deepest sympathies to the victims, their loved ones, and everyone in our community who’s grieving today.
— Twitch (@Twitch) August 26, 2018
Shortly after the tragedy, Twitch said it would make changes.
“Security at TwitchCon is our top priority and is something we take very seriously at all our events,” the company told TechCrunch in August. “We regularly review and iterate on our policies and approach in order to provide a safe and positive experience for staff, attendees, and exhibitors. In the wake of yesterday’s tragedy we will be re-reviewing our plans and updating them accordingly,” a spokesperson had said at the time.
The updated plans for TwitchCon are detailed on Twitch’s blog and its FAQ.
Image credit: Twitch
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Twitch will livestream Pokémon TV series and movies, while viewers ‘catch’ badges
Twitch has teamed up with The Pokémon Company to allow viewers to binge watch the Pokémon: The Series TV show and related movies on its site, and “catch” Pokémon badges along the way. While the former is one of Twitch’s many retro binge watch fests – it’s previously streamed old shows like Bob Ross, Julia Child, Mister Rogers, SNL, and most recently, Knight Rider – the interactive feature it’s debuting is something new.
According to the company, Twitch will launch its own Pokémon extension to accompany the broadcast. This overlay, called “Twitch Presents: Pokémon Badge Collector,” will encourage viewers to collect Pokémon badges that appear on the screen for points, which places them on a leaderboard.
This is only the second time Twitch has added an interactive element like this to one of its viewing events, and its addition could see users watching for longer periods of time, as a result. The first was a “watch and win” extension during a Doctor Who broadcast, but it was different as it focused on collecting contest entries.
Twitch also notes this will be the longest viewing event it’s ever held.
The binge will see 16 movies and 19 TV seasons with 932 episodes streamed across Twitch’s network, starting on August 27, 2018, and spanning until 2019. This will kick off with the first season, Pokémon: Indigo League at 10 AM PDT on the 27ths for audiences in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Latin America, and Australia. The content will air on TwitchPresents and on its companion channels in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese.
“The Twitch community has a passion for Pokémon based on the warm embrace the series received when we celebrated the brand’s 20th anniversary, as well as the cultural milestone that was set when over a hundred thousand Twitch members played Pokémon together,” said Jane Weedon, Director of Business Development at Twitch, in a statement about the launch.
The viewing event comes at a time when reports claim Twitch is going after a wider audience than just gamers. The company has been wooing creatives like vloggers, cooks, artists, and others to come to its site, instead of only broadcasting on YouTube. And it’s been airing non-esports content through marathon events like this new one with Pokémon. According to Bloomberg, TV show livestreams are one of the two fastest-growing genres on the site, the other being “IRL” (in real life) content.
The Pokémon viewing event, in particular, is aimed at a younger audience who may not have the level of nostalgia for the classic TV shows Twitch previously aired. Instead, Twitch says the livestream is appropriate for fans 13 and up – which means it could attract those whose first real exposure to Pokémon was the mobile game that went viral following its launch in 2016.
The dates and times of the Pokémon series and movies will be on Twitch Presents. The binge fest won’t include newer series, like the Sun & Moon or Sun & Moon Ultra Adventures, however.
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Twitch Prime ditches ad-free viewing as one of its perks
Twitch Prime, the perks program for Amazon Prime members offering free loot, games and other benefits, is ditching one of its best features: ad-free viewing. According to an email sent out to Amazon Prime members today, ad-free viewing will no longer be included as a part of Twitch Prime for new members, beginning on September 14. However, members with existing annual subscriptions will be able to continue to enjoy ad-free viewing until their subscription comes up for renewal.
Those with monthly subscriptions will have access to ad-free viewing until October 15.
Twitch’s email offered a simple explanation as to why ad-free viewing was no longer going to be a part of the benefit program, saying that: “advertising is an important source of support for the creators who make Twitch possible.”
The company also stressed that this change would “strengthen and expand that advertising opportunity for creators so they can get more support from their viewers for doing what they love.”
In an accompanying blog post, Twitch further explained that the change will allow Twitch to remain a place where “anyone can enjoy one-of-a-kind interactive entertainment” and where creators can “build communities around the things they love and make money doing it.”
In other words, creators need to make more money, and so does Twitch — especially if it ever wants to challenge YouTube.
As you may expect, Twitch user reaction has been swift and negative. In the comments of Twitch’s post, users are threatening to ditch Twitch Prime altogether saying that its other features — like in-game loot, monthly channel subscriptions, exclusive badges and the like — were not the main reasons they were interested in this perks program.
Twitch Prime was launched in September 2016 as a benefit for Amazon Prime members — one of the now many perks that accompany a Prime subscription, in addition to Amazon’s Prime two-day shipping. Amazon had acquired Twitch in 2014, and this was the first big move it made to integrate the two properties beyond airing some TV pilots on the service.
Since Twitch Prime’s launch, Amazon has been adding features to the program — most recently, free games every month, for example. Twitch says this year it’s given away more than $1,000 worth of games and loot to members, and promises “more and better free games” and loot in the future.
Although ad-free viewing across Twitch won’t be included in Twitch Prime in the future, the company did note that there will still be a way to turn off ads.
If Twitch users have an Amazon Prime membership (meaning they’ll still have Twitch Prime, too), they can use their monthly subscription token on a channel that offers ad-free viewing to subscribers.
In addition, users can opt for Twitch Turbo, a separate monthly subscription program that offers ad-free viewing across all of Twitch, plus other features like additional emoticons, chat badges, priority support and more.
Users, of course, are outraged that a benefit that used to come free with a Prime subscription will now cost an additional $8.99 per month.
Twitch’s decision to remove ad-free viewing could be a part of its bigger plan to woo creators to its service.
The company has been in the news as of late for having YouTube-esque ambitions. According to a report from Bloomberg, the company wants to turn the game-streaming site into a broader video service and has been pursuing live-streaming deals with dozens of popular creators and media companies that have large YouTube fan bases. The company has been offering minimum guarantees as high as a few million dollars a year, plus a share of future advertising sales and subscription revenues, the report said.
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Twitch is closing its Communities
Say goodbye to Twitch’s Communities. The game-streaming service says it’s soon killing off this still relatively new addition to its site in favor of implementing a tagging system instead. With the changes, users will be able to filter streams by tags within a directory or across different games on the Browse page, in order to better find the sort of streams they want to watch.
The closure of Communities and addition of tags is being planned for mid-September, says Twitch.
Twitch launched Communities just last year, with the goal of better catering to users’ unique interests. For example, different types of gaming, like retro, or different activities, like speedrunning, could then have their own community. There are also communities centered around titles like Fortnite Battle Royale, PUBG, League of Legends and others, as well as those focused on creative endeavors like music, drawing, cooking, cosplay and more.
But the system has become less helpful as Twitch itself, the number of streamers and the number of communities grew. Today, there’s a lot of overlap between different Communities or between Communities and games, says Twitch.
This is attributable, in part, to the open nature of Communities — there are many with similar names, and no good way to tell what makes them different from one another at first glance.
“Communities were one solution for giving viewers information to help them decide what to watch, but viewers weren’t able to see that information while browsing within a directory they were interested in,” the company noted in an announcement.
It also found that Communities weren’t driving viewers to watch streams — in fact less than 3 percent of Twitch viewership was from users who found streams through the Communities feature. That points to a pretty broad failure of Communities serving as a discovery feature.
Twitch now hopes that the implementation of tags will make things better on that front.
The company says it will add tags to the site in mid-September, and these will be used to identify a stream across Twitch’s directory pages, the homepage, search, channel pages and everywhere else. The main Directory pages and the Browse page will also be able to be filtered by these tags, some of which will be auto-generated.
Twitch says it will automatically add tags like game genres, and some in-game features it can auto-detect — another project it now has in the works. But most of the tags will be selected by the streamer — not user-generated, to be clear, but selected.
Streamers will be able to suggest new tags, however.
The tags will appear alongside the video thumbnail, stream title and the game or category being streamed.
The change is one that speaks to the limitations of portal-like interfaces being used to access a large amount of information — that is, browsing to a particular section to find things you like, then scrolling through those results takes too much time. It isn’t that helpful in the long run. Tagging lets users filter information, paring down, in this case, a large number of Twitch streams to find just those you like.
That being said, not all Twitch users are happy about the changes. But some are happy about it and others are cautiously optimistic about tagging.
So in case you haven’t heard the news, @Twitch is removing Communities because “they werent being used” which means that The Cookout Community page that we’ve built up over this past year wont exist a month from now. We will have to come up with new ways to find each other. pic.twitter.com/95fKSgTwB0
— The Villain. (@DennyVonDoom) August 9, 2018
It is with a heavy heart i must share the sad news,That Twitch Communities will be removed,say goodbye to Communities we are being introduced to Tags. Unsure on how this will work out on twitch. I only have but one thing to say, Everything We Do Will Remain The Same #CESupport pic.twitter.com/OjkGXjoYgP
— Letseuq [CE] (@Letseuqion) August 10, 2018
We feel communities gave streamers a sense of self identity that was much needed
It is worrisome to see tags implemented instead of more freeform communties as it removes agency from the streamers in how they choose to define their stream and themselves.
What are your thoughts?
— TwitchKittens (@TwitchKittens) August 9, 2018
It’s a shame that @Twitch are removing Communities, but the implementation of tags is a really cool idea, and I look forward to the possibility of seeing a #StreamersConnected tag.
— Lt Zonda [SC] (@LTZONDA) August 9, 2018
I’m happy with it to be honest, 3 communities is extremely limiting anyway especially when the majority of people have more than 3. I dunno how anyone was supposed to find community pages easily, think more traffic came from external sources and game listings than community pages
— OK Sauce (@oksaucedesu) August 10, 2018
Honesty, I don’t see how this’ll hurt anyone. You can still make communities outside of Twitch. Then you can just use a tag instead. Same idea really. What is a community? A bunch of people using the same tag? I’m still not even part of a community.
— Vanilla Bizcotti (@VanBiztheRapper) August 10, 2018
The interesting thing about @Twitch rolling out this tags feature is that they’re gonna eventually include them on mobile….which they never did for Communities. So how can you accurately measure the usefulness of the Communities feature if not everybody had access to it?
— Jae. (@JaeTheTerrible) August 10, 2018
Everyone is getting up in arms about Twitch removing communities. Believe it or not, communities can be used to push away gamers just as much as bring them together.
— Vanilla Bizcotti (@VanBiztheRapper) August 10, 2018
Twitch says tagging will first launch on the web, and the company will then listen to feedback about missing tags before launching the feature on mobile.
The mid-September launch date could change, but is the target for now.
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Twitch launches a ‘how-to’ site for streamers, Twitch Creator Camp
Twitch wants more people to stream, so it’s going to begin teaching them how. The video game streaming site today announced the launch of Twitch Creator Camp, a new educational resource that helps newcomers learn the basics of streaming, as well as how to build up a channel, connect with fans, and earn rewards.
The launch of the how-to site comes about a week after an article by The Verge detailed the long tail of Twitch streamers, with a focus on those who spend years broadcasting to no one in the hopes of one day gaining a following.
The article raised the question that, in the age of live streaming, where every major social company – including Facebook, Instagram and YouTube – today offers easy streaming tools, there many not be enough of an audience for all the content creators are producing.
Twitch, apparently, believes the issue is one that can be addressed – at least in part – by training new streamers.
On Twitch Creator Camp, the company is bringing in successful creators to help educate the would-be streamers on a variety of often-discussed topics. These insights will be shared as articles, videos and live streams.
At launch, the site includes content focused on a variety of streaming best practices, including the basics of setting up a channel, building a brand, leveraging their stats, using Twitch features like emotes, badges and extensions, and more.
Streamers will also learn how to better network with others and engage their audience, as well as how to optimize their channel for monetization through subscriptions, merchandise, ads and sponsorships.
In addition, creators will begin live streaming on Creator Camp, starting on July 31 at 2 PM PT.
At this time, a number of Twitch Partners will answer general questions about streaming. A calendar of upcoming streams is also available on Twitch’s site, as the company aims to host weekly sessions going forward.
“Hosting a good stream isn’t easy. We’ve heard from many of our creators that they spend a lot of time searching for advice on effective tools, features, and techniques in order to make their broadcasts more engaging and to grow their communities,” said Jessica Messinger, Creator Growth Marketing Manager at Twitch, in a statement.
“Twitch Creator Camp makes things simpler by centralizing the most relevant information to a creator’s success, all of which is provided by Twitch and many of our successful Partners. We want to help our creators succeed and this is just the beginning,” she added.
Twitch says the partners it’s working with for Creator Camp are being compensated for their efforts. Currently, those participating include: Jericho, gassymexican, teawrex, JGhosty, pokket, firedragon, venalis, tominationtime, sypherpk, xmiramira, iamBrandon, DeejayKnight, Lobosjr, sacriel, PmsProxy, itmeJP, kaypealol, and Pokimane.
Twitch today has over 2.2 million broadcasters serving up streams on its site every month, which are consumed by 15 million daily active viewers who watch an average of 95 minutes of content daily. However, much of the on-site activity – just like on YouTube and elsewhere – is dominated by top creators.
Meanwhile, many of Twitch’s smaller streamers may already understand the basics and tips that Twitch’s Creator Camp is offering. For them, the issue is not one of following all the steps being laid out, but rather one of discovery.
Twitch has been working to address its discovery issues, too, having last month detailed a number of projects it’s working on across this front which are in various phases of development.
“We don’t believe Twitch should be a popularity contest” the company said at the time.
Twitch Creator Camp is open as of today, with the live streams starting at the end of the month.
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Twitch streamers can now let viewers react with GIFs
Giphy is coming to Twitch . For the first time, Giphy is bringing its library of animated GIFs to the Amazon-owned game streaming service. The company today is launching a Giphy extension for Twitch streamers that will allow viewers to react in real-time using GIFs during a broadcast. The idea is that GIFs could make streams more engaging and entertaining, which would, in turn, attract retain viewers for longer periods of time.
Twitch extensions were first introduced last year, but only recently did Twitch add support for running multiple extensions at once. That could encourage more developers to try out the Giphy extension, without having to give up their other favorite overlays.
To use the new extension, the streamer will first configure which part of the screen area will be used to display the GIFs viewers post. Once the extension is activated, viewers will be able to access it during a broadcast via a Giphy icon and the search terms they enter into the message bar.
Twitch is not the first game streaming site to experiment with GIF reactions. The newer site Caffeine had this as a feature, too, but pulled it before launch because they found it could be used for harassment. Twitch and Giphy are hoping to not make the sane mistake by curating the catalog of GIFs that can be shared.
According to Twitch, Giphy’s content is moderated to remove those GIFs that are “overtly offense” to any race, gender, ethnicity or community. It’s also limiting GIFs to those with a PG rating and below, which will prohibit users from posting GIFs with violence, sexual references, and other lewd terms, it says.
“Extensions are a great framework designed to make channels on Twitch more interactive so creators can better engage and retain their fans,” said Amir Shevat, Twitch VP of Developer Experience, in a statement. “With Giphy tapping into their extensive library of animated GIFs for their new Extension, it adds a fun and compelling new element to the social video experience that is sure to resonate with the current meme generation.”
Extensions are one of Twitch’s differentiating features in the game streaming market. Thanks to Twitch’s scale, there are now thousands of these add-ons and overlays in development, and over 250 which have gone live since the feature’s launch. Dozens of these, including Giphy’s, also work alongside others, allowing streamers to better customize their broadcasts and channels.
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Facebook launches Brand Collabs search engine for sponsoring creators
Facebook wants to help connect brands to creators so they can work out sponsored content and product placement deals, even if it won’t be taking a cut. Confirming our scoop from May, Facebook today launched its Brand Collabs Manager. It’s a search engine that brands can use to browse different web celebrities based on the demographics of their audience and portfolios of their past sponsored content.
Creators hoping to score sponsorship deals will be able to compile a portfolio connected to their Facebook Page that shows off how they can seamlessly work brands into their content. Brands will also be able to find them based on the top countries where they’re popular, and audience characteristics like interests, gender, education, relationship status, life events or home ownership.
Facebook also made a wide range of other creator monetization announcements today:
- Facebook’s Creator app that launched on iOS in November rolled out globally on Android today (this link should be active soon once the app populates across Google Play). The Creator app lets content makers add intros and outros to Live broadcasts, cross-post content to Twitter and Instagram, see a unified inbox of their Facebook and Instagram comments plus Messenger chats, and more ways to connect with fans.
- Ad Breaks, or mid-video commercials, are rolling out to more U.S. creators, starting with those that make longer and original content with loyal fans. Creators keep 55 percent of the ad revenue from the ads.
- Patreon-Style Subscriptions are rolling out to more creators, letting them charge fans $4.99 per month for access to exclusive behind the scenes content plus a badge that highlights that they’re a patron. Facebook also offers microtransaction tipping of video creators through its new virtual currency called Stars.
- Top Fan Badges that highlight a creator’s most engaged fans will now roll out more broadly after a strong initial reaction to tests in March.
- Rights Manager, which lets content owners upload their videos so Facebook can fingerprint them and block others from uploading them, is now available for creators not just publishers.
Facebook also made a big announcement today about the launch of interactive video features and its first set of gameshows built with them. Creators can add quizzes, polls, gamification and more to their videos so users can play along instead of passively viewing. Facebook’s Watch hub for original content is also expanding to a wider range of show formats and creators.
Why Facebook wants sponsored content
Facebook needs the hottest new content from creators if it wants to prevent users’ attention from slipping to YouTube, Netflix, Twitch and elsewhere. But to keep creators loyal, it has to make sure they’re earning money off its platform. The problem is, injecting Ad Breaks that don’t scare off viewers can be difficult, especially on shorter videos.
But Vine proved that six seconds can be enough to convey a subtle marketing message. A startup called Niche rose to arrange deals between creators and brands who wanted a musician to make a song out of the windows and doors of their new Honda car, or a comedian to make a joke referencing Coca-Cola. Twitter eventually acquired Niche for a reported $50 million so it could earn money off Vine without having to insert traditional ads. [Disclosure: My cousin Darren Lachtman was a co-founder of Niche.]
Vine naturally attracted content makers in a way that Facebook has had some trouble with. YouTube’s sizable ad revenue shares, Patreon’s subscriptions and Twitch’s fan tipping are pulling creators away from Facebook.
So rather than immediately try to monetize this sponsored content, Facebook is launching the Brand Collabs Manager to prove to creators that it can get them paid indirectly. Facebook already offered a way for creators to tag their content with disclosure tags about brands they were working with. But now it’s going out of its way to facilitate the deals. Fan subscriptions and tipping come from the same motive: letting creators monetize through their audience rather than the platform itself.
Spinning up these initiatives to be more than third-rate knockoffs of Niche, YouTube, Patreon and Twitch will take some work. But hey, it’s cheaper for Facebook than paying these viral stars out of pocket.
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Facebook launches Fb.gg gaming video hub to compete with Twitch
Facebook wants a cut of the 3+ hours per week that young adult video gamers spend watching other people play. So today it launched Fb.gg — as in the post-competition courtesy of saying “good game” — a destination where viewers can find a collection of all the video games streaming on Facebook. Fb.gg will show video based on the games and streaming celebrities they follow, their Liked Pages and Groups, plus it will display featured creators, esports competitions and gaming conference events.
Aggregating gaming content could make sure it doesn’t get lost in the fast-moving News Feed. It could be especially useful for people whose Facebook friends aren’t into the gaming niche. The personalized recommendations based on Facebook activity could help the social network out-curate video-only sites like YouTube and Twitch . And if game streamers feel like they can build a big audience on Facebook, they’ll share there. Still, Facebook is getting a late start here.
Facebook Stars tipping currency
Meanwhile, Facebook is opening up its new monetization option to more gaming broadcasters. Facebook is launching the Level Up program for emerging gaming content creators. Available in the next few months, those with access will be able to take monetary tips from their stream viewers in the form of virtual currency.
Facebook first announced its monetization program for streamers in January, but now the virtual currency is called Facebook Stars. For each Star a streamer receives, Facebook will pay them $0.01. We’ve reached out to see if Facebook will be taking a cut of these tips. Stream viewers on desktop can now give Stars to any creator in the Level Up program. Facebook is also rolling out its Patreon-style monthly subscription fan patronage feature test to more gamers in the coming weeks.
Those admitted to Level Up will also get special custom support, HD 1080p 60fps transcoding and a special badge on their profile. Plus, they’ll receive early access to new Facebook live-streaming features and tips on how to build their fan base. Gamers can check out the eligibility requirements for these programs here. Those include having a Gaming Video Creator Facebook Page with at least 100 followers and broadcasting at least 4 hours with sessions on at least 2 days in the past 2 weeks.
Gamers have plenty of options to earn money from YouTube ad revenue shares and Twitch’s tipping options. Facebook needs to ramp up these monetization efforts quickly to capitalize on the sudden surge in game streaming. If Facebook can convince streamers it’s not just a place for Pong-aged people, it could turn the video ads on game broadcasts into a nice little revenue generator.
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Quarterback lets top esports gamers and streamers create their own fan-based leagues
In an effort to tie the top gamers and streamers more directly with their fans, a new company called Quarterback has just raised $2.5 million to create and manage fan-based leagues for the superstars of the esports and streaming world.
The company raked in its seed round from investors led by Bitkraft Esports, which is quickly building one of the most complete portfolios of gaming-related startups in the industry. Additional investors include Crest Capital Ventures, Deep Space Ventures, UpWest Labs and angel investors.
Essentially, it’s a platform for creating gaming leagues and content driven not by game publishers, leagues, or existing streaming sites like Twitch, but by the gamers themselves. It gives streamers and players a new way to reach their audience, the company claims.
Founded by serial entrepreneur Jonathan Weinberg, who acted as the chief executive for Round Robin and held a leadership role in the mobile game studio Spartonix, Quarterback is the latest attempt to get more revenue into the hands of gamers.
Leagues created on Quarterback can host daily challenges, give away prizes and compete against fan clubs devoted to other top players.
Esports streamers and gamers are among the most bankable influencers, pitching to a new generation of consumers that don’t track traditional media sources. The ability to host and own their own channels gives these streamers an ability to create their own game libraries, cultivate a next generation of talent and encourage one-to-one interactions on platforms they control.
“Most streamers and pros struggle to monetize their fan-base and lose touch with their audience when the fans break away to play their own games,” says Jens Hilgers, a founding partner of Bitkraft Esports Ventures. “Quarterback solves this problem in a unique way by helping streamers become an integral part of their fan’s game-play.”
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Twitch solidifies its lead with viewership up 21% in Q1, while YouTube Gaming drops
Twitch further solidified its lead in the game streaming market in the first quarter of the year, with gains in both average concurrent viewership and peak concurrent viewership, while the number two streaming site, YouTube Gaming, saw losses on both fronts. According to a new report from Streamlabs, which has visibility into the market thanks to its software platform used by hundreds of thousands of streamers, Twitch viewership was up by 21 percent in the quarter, growing from 788K average concurrent viewers in Q4 2017 to 953K in Q1.
Meanwhile, YouTube Gaming dropped 12 percent from 308K average concurrent viewers to 272K during that same time.
Other streaming services also saw gains, but their viewership numbers are much smaller.
Facebook, for example, grew viewership by 103 percent to reach 56K average concurrent viewers, Periscope grew 18 percent to 94K, and Microsoft’s Mixer grew 90 percent to 9.5K. (Microsoft’s real figures are likely much higher, however, because Streamlabs can’t track Mixer’s viewership on Xbox – which is most of it. Streamlabs is also missing some of Facebook Live’s viewership, as it can’t track private live streams only shared with friends.)
It’s no surprise that Twitch has a killer quarter, however.
The company announced in February it saw a record-breaking 388,000 concurrent viewers tune into a stream by Dr. Disrespect. This milestone was then blown out of the water the following month when Ninja played Fortnite with Drake and Travis Scott, reaching 628,000 concurrent viewers.
But even without these special events, Twitch has been growing.
It also saw a 33 percent increase in average concurrent streamers in Q1, going from 27K to 36K. Mixer and Periscope gained as well, up 282 percent and 126 percent, respectively. But YouTube Gaming dropped by 13 percent on this metric, going from 8.7K average concurrent streamers in Q4 2017 to 6.1K in Q1.
As Twitch grew, streamers made more money, too, Streamlabs found.
It claims to have seen the biggest quarter ever in Streamlabs tipping volume, rising 33 percent to $34.7 million, up from $26.2 million in the prior quarter. (Keep in mind this is tipping that takes place through Streamlabs software – the total tipping volume across platforms will be even higher.)
The company chalks up these gains to a variety of factors, including streamers’ more professional-quality videos, streams from games with huge audiences like Fortnite, growth of non-game streams, and more.
Streamlabs’ full report, here, also delves into its own gains in terms of traction, as well as the breakdown of the quarter’s most popular games.
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