The digital age has brought with it a whole host of new career opportunities. But surely none would seem quite so bizarre to time-travelling visitors from even the late 20th century as the phenomenon of professional game streamers. The closest comparison from that era would have been if talented gamers spent their days in arcades playing video games and loyal followers paid a subscription to stand and watch over their shoulders, perhaps even getting to exchange a word or two.
Of course, nothing like that ever happened back in the 1980s, but if it had, you can be sure the arcades would have looked after their stars, perhaps keeping them refreshed with complimentary drinks and snacks, or even offering them free play on games. After all, they would have been good for business.
That’s all speculation on what might have been, but the fact that Twitch, the leading, and until recently practically the only, platform for this sort of streaming did not do all it could to keep its gamers gaming is now under the microscope. Twitch is under attack from all angles and its biggest stars are jumping ship.
Ninja Leading the exodus
If you have heard of game streaming, you are sure to have heard of Ninja. Also known as Tyler Blevins, the 32 year old rose to fame in 2017 by playing games like Halo 3, PUBG and Fortnite, streaming his gaming sessions on Twitch and offering tips and chat for his followers.
He made $10 million in 2018, and continued to make more than $500,000 per month thereafter. Ninja really was a trailblazer, and soon there were half a dozen high profile gaming influencers that were making similar money, and helping Twitch transform from a little known platform for gaming geeks into a mainstream leisure hangout in cyberspace.
So far so good, but in 2021, Twitch made the first of several moves that caused experts in the field to wonder if they were simply getting bored making all that money and wanted to give the competition a chance to catch up. One of the most drastic was to increase their cut on subscriptions from 30 percent to 50 percent. The reaction was such that they rapidly brought in a workaround to enable “senior clients” like Ninja to keep at the 70/30 arrangement.
By then, the damage was done, Ninja was already voting with his feet and others were following him, not to YouTube but to an Aussie-owned platform called Kick where 95 percent of streamer subscriptions can be retained by the player.
Kick shifts from casinos to mainstream game streaming
Kick is an upstart brand that was launched in March by Australian software company Easygo Entertainment Pty. Easygo’s background is in iGaming, a niche that is more popular on a per capita basis in Australia than anywhere else in the world. Online casino gaming has gradually become the go-to for Aussie gamblers, and so the environment is competitive. TopAustralianGambling.com ranks & reviews online casinos and you can see just how many Australian casino brands are vying for attention with their range of pokies and live casino games. more popular grown from insignificant contributor to a core part of the sector. The level of competition and the difficult regulatory backdrop combined to drive Easygo to diversify into the broader gaming market, which is what led it to launch Kick.
Attracting a streamer of Ninja’s reputation to leave Twitch for Kick within months of launch is the sort of coup they could scarcely have imagined possible. In early June, Ninja signed off from Twitch for the last time with the words: “For the first time ever we’re going to say YOLO swag f**k it, and test out Kick.” Within days, another high-profile Twitch gamer who plays under the name of xQc, announced that he had signed a two-year contract with Kick worth about $100 million.
For years, Twitch has been the go-to name in game streaming. YouTube and other channels have threatened to muscle in on that for some time, but Kick has done exactly what its name suggests. It will be intriguing to see how Twitch might fight back over the coming months.
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