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submitted 10 months ago by ylai@lemmy.ml to c/gaming@lemmy.ml
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[-] ampersandrew@kbin.social 135 points 10 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 10 points 10 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 48 points 10 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 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 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 11 points 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.

[-] Marin_Rider@aussie.zone 7 points 10 months ago

hold on, you mean to tell me a platform that exists and is known purely for LIVE streaming content has put ads OVER the livestream interrupting your view? what kind of idiot would have approved such a service killing move?

[-] derpgon@programming.dev 5 points 10 months ago

As a mod, you can postpone an ad by 5 minutes 3 times. You can't postpone it by 1 minute, you can't choose to play them during downtime, you can't do shit but pray an interesting moment doesn't happen during the 1 minute.

[-] wurstgulasch3000@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

Adblockers still work so I've never seen ads on twitch

[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 102 points 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.

[-] Carighan@lemmy.world 19 points 10 months ago

This always makes me wonder how their operation can be so pricey.

It sounds more like their human resource cost is just absurd, not that their underlying technical operation is the problem. Plus assuming they did any calculation on the ads at all, their server usage should pay for itself as more load means more views means more ad impressions.

But what does Twitch need X-thousand people for if they still cannot do anything about curating content with those endless people? All I see of them is someone writing flip-flopping statements about whether nudity on stream is okay or not, always depends on which month it is it feels like.

[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 25 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Video encoding is an expensive operation and probably the second largest cost next to wages. And apparently they aren't even on an AWS SLA.

AN AMAZON SUBSIDIARY NOT ON AN SLA

Are they really a revenue sink to cover up taxable income?

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[-] CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

Or they just shutter twitch once they realize it’s unprofitable.

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[-] xkforce@lemmy.world 79 points 10 months ago* (last edited 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.

[-] SomeGuy69@lemmy.world 56 points 10 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 31 points 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?

[-] PenguinTD@lemmy.ca 18 points 10 months ago

very typical for people that never even run or host their own server from data center or even cloud service.

live streaming is worse in bandwidth consumption compare to youtube with same resolution input to output. Like youtube can do whatever they like to keep the outgoing low even if you encode according to spec. But streaming with the demand of like 4~6s delay their 2nd pass to try lower the output bitrate is just not gonna be as good as youtube. That's why twitch still don't have 4k stream, they have new beta programs thanks to newer codec on newer GPU, as otherwise their data center is gonna get crushed hard.

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[-] OminousOrange@lemmy.ca 11 points 10 months ago

Subs of which they can often take 50% commission on.

[-] turkalino@lemmy.yachts 8 points 10 months ago

It is believable when you remember that American companies simply don't need to be profitable anymore

[-] AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world 49 points 10 months ago

Maybe he should take a big pay cut if he's doing that bad a job

[-] bigkahuna1986@lemmy.ml 8 points 10 months ago

Is our business plan out of touch?

No, it's the employees who are wrong.

[-] Binthinkin@kbin.social 47 points 10 months ago
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[-] stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 43 points 10 months ago

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

Let it rot

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[-] KinNectar@kbin.run 24 points 10 months ago

One has to wonder if they just split off adult content into a separate platform using the same Amazon logins, and including cross-platform notifications one way from the twitch site to the adult site whether it would solve both their cash flow and advertising problem.

[-] Carighan@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Or just buy Onlyfans. 😅 For Onlyfans it'd solve their payment issues: Amazon allows using it for payment, and Amazon is big enough that Visa and MC cannot just threaten it.

[-] SatouKazuma@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

Where's that article that shows firms that make workers redundant are worse off in the long run when one needs it? Fuck these cunts. Maybe we should just get rid of capitalism instead.

[-] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 10 points 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.

[-] derpgon@programming.dev 12 points 10 months ago

Actively, no, but passively on a second monitor, I occasionally join in the discussion in chat. Finding a smallish streamer who actually reads you messages is nice.

[-] Juigi@lemm.ee 6 points 10 months ago

There's a lot more than just dudes eating and shouting.

[-] fushuan@lemm.ee 6 points 10 months ago

Maybe then watch better streams. I usually watch streamers play games while talking to the chat or commenting on the gameplay, while I play a similar game. It's entertaining.

[-] qooqie@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Is it the infrastructure costs? I imagine that costs quite a bit

[-] Xin_shill@lemm.ee 21 points 10 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 22 points 10 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.

[-] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 6 points 10 months ago

Why should AWS subsidize Twitch?

From the point of view of AWS, they make money whether they host Twitch or some other streamer. If Twitch can't make money paying retail hosting, the decision of what to do with it has to be made by people who control Twitch.

[-] angrymouse@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Why should AWS subsidize Twitch?

Because they kinda do it for every service of them, the point is to spread to all the markets with subsidies until kill the competition, and then keep a marginal profit to avoid competition while still makes a marginal profit (what in scale is a big profit anyway). This is usually what these megacorps do.

[-] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 4 points 10 months ago

Do they? I wouldn't be surprised if AWS even charges Amazon.com full retail for hosting. The point is the company has a lot of different business units that report up to the CEO, and business units generally act like mini companies.

The accounting of charging full retail to other business units is a lot cleaner than giving preferred rates and making it harder to understand the finances of what is going on with the different business units.

A CEO may be willing to operate a business unit at a loss for strategic reasons, but they have to understand that said business unit is costing the company money.

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[-] Endorkend@kbin.social 13 points 10 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.

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[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 months ago

They recently left South Korea too.

[-] MysticKetchup@lemmy.world 11 points 10 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

[-] ZOSTED@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

They thought the party was going to last forever, so they ordered a bunch of jumbo pizzas and kegs

I mean it's more like they paid themselves a bunch of bonuses and hired super duper growth hacking experts or whatever, and now they can't pay for them, so god forbid they cut from the top

[-] GreatRam@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Bandwidth, which you need for streaming is not cheap

[-] KrasMazov@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 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.

[-] snooggums@kbin.social 8 points 10 months ago

Sounds like Hollywood accounting where the movies with the largest gaps between production costs and ticket sales magically lose money.

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this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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