Personally, I'm 100% against this. Twitch should be left alone. There's going to be no competition left, and we're going to be forcefed where we should go by youtube-go to this channel, go to that channel. Erm-go to hell. I just want to go to watch streams. Not watch some garbage music video, some garbage stunt video-I WANT GAMES. That's what Twitch is about-GAMING. It's not to be made into some 5th rate platform like Youtube.
And it's also going to be terrible for competition. Before long there won't be any and we won't have a choice in where we go. Thankfully, the US Justice Dept is looking into this on competition grounds to see if it's fair. I'm hoping that they'll stop this from happening. If not it'll be disastrous.
YouTube to Buy Twitch TV?
YouTube has allegedly made a deal to purchase Twitch for $1 billion.
The gaming community has been left reeling after an article published by Variety reported that Google-owned YouTube was to acquire Twitch for $1 billion.
The ever-growing videogame-streaming site is the most popular of its kind among both streamers and viewers, and reportedly represented "1.35% of all download bandwidth on North American fixed-access broadband networks" in March 2014.
Both Twitch and YouTube declined to comment, but the response from the gaming community was loud and clear, with #RIPTwitch trending on Twitter within minutes of the news.
Google acquired YouTube back in 2006 for $1.65 billion before implementing changes that were largely disliked by the community, such as Google+ integration and several site redesigns. However, TechCrunch recently reported that Google is to dismantle Google+, a social media platform designed to compete with Facebook, and that staff were already being reassigned to other projects.
As a YouTube content creator and Twitch streamer, I've come up with some pros and cons that could come out of this deal, should it indeed go ahead.
Pros
- A lot of streamers tend to upload a short video to YouTube, announcing to their subscribers that they are live. With YouTube integration, this could become automated.
- Faster and more stable servers leading to more consistent, greater-quality video
- Easier uploading of live stream highlights from Twitch to YouTube
Cons
- With YouTube's insistence on featuring popular channels and attempts to guess what viewers want to watch based on their viewing history, the opportunity for small or new streamers to grow will shrink vastly
- Google will have the monopoly in the online video gaming community when it comes to video
- YouTube's ContentID system could be applied to streams
Are you a content creator and/or streamer with an opinion on this subject? Even if you're simply a viewer, please leave your comments below.
Penny for your thoughts,
Follow me on Twitter: @QelricDK