The war on stream exclusivity continues to rage on as Twitch has now taken measures to ensure it retains some big names.
The world of streaming has never exactly been a stable community to establish oneself in. Dominated by a select few and saturated by many smaller name streamers looking for their big break it, takes a great deal of talent, skill and just being in the right place at the right time to solidify yourself as “Internet famous.”
Yet while streaming as a career has always been a risky endeavour for those individuals looking to get into the industry from a personal entertainment angle, it’s recently become a lot more challenging for actual streaming platforms to retain their relevance, largely due to the new trend of exclusivity deals. While Tyler “Ninja” Blevins was the first to go all-in on signing an exclusivity contract with Mixer, the ripples of that move have been felt throughout the industry as companies have attempted to win over popular streamers. Mixer also recently signed Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek while popular streamer Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang has officially been signed up by Facebook Gaming.
In an attempt to retain relevancy, which is arguably unnecessary for such an already well-established platform, Twitch has now announced that they have officially signed three big name streamers to their platform: Ben “DrLupo” Lupo, Saqib “LIRIK” Zahid and Timothy “TimTheTatman” Betar. While the actual terms of the multi-year contracts have yet to be disclosed, the move seems to be a calculated opportunity by Twitch as all three streamers have collected follower count of roughly 10.36 million. It seems like a smart deal to take for the entertainers as they will be able to retain the platform that they originally established themselves on without having to worry about growing another audience on a separate streaming site.
While Twitch clearly knows that exclusivity deals are quickly becoming the norm it’s also worth acknowledging that they’re not exactly suffering for it. Twitch still owns roughly 73% of the online streaming market and still dominates Mixer, YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming in terms of viewers and hours watched. Still, it makes sense for them to be paying attention to how the industry is turning and probably a smart move to sign some contracts before it’s too late.
Last Updated: December 11, 2019
Jacques Van Zyl
December 11, 2019 at 15:42
Oh ffs. First we had to console exclusivity, then streaming platforms got in on it, then somehow PC gaming got exclusives and now there’s the great streaming war of 2020? Man… I’m tired. I just want to play my games, have fun streaming and not always have to choose a damn side in everything from politics to religion, to where and how I play games as an escape from politics and religion.
/rant
Apologies.
Son of Banana Jim
December 11, 2019 at 15:42
Fortunately, with these streaming sites, they’re just a tab or two away, rather than a complete installer or two… Ugh… Epic games.
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 15:42
Remember the old days before single platform installers? Before Steam? I do. I’d take 3 launchers over 43 different exe files any day. Thanks.
HairyEwok
December 11, 2019 at 15:42
Remember the old days when your games were actually yours and not on some cloud account that can be taken by Sergei in Russia…
Admiral Chief
December 11, 2019 at 15:42
Remember the old days when games were complete and DLCs were non-existent and EXPANSION packs were massive?
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
Yes. I also remember how long you waited for a patch to fix bugs, if those ever arrived. And the NAG CDs that were the lifesaver of many a gamer in that regard.
Admiral Chief
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
Yeah, 50mb patches took a LONG time to download
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
Hah that’s if you had internet access. Some of us (me) didn’t at that time. What a different world.
I’d still take that over the fucking lootboxes and MTX-ridden live service shit we have to deal with today, but hey.
HairyEwok
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
I feel a member berries meme coming….
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
Technically the games were never ours. We just had a licence to install and use them. The physical disc and associated key served the same purpose as the launchers do today. Proof of validity of said licence to use said game.
HairyEwok
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
Differrence is you didn’t need the internet, didn’t need any other form of validity to play the game. Once bought and you had that CD and key, you could do as you please with the property. Now is a totally different story, just imagine Steam loses all it’s servers in some stupid ass way, all those games that need a steam login to play will be lost, the guy with his CD and good ol serial can just boot up and not worry about logins. We’ve becoming too dependent on technology.
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
Eh there’s still OS compatibility. Pretty much none of my old CD-based games work on today’s OSs. Just don’t work. I have a box full of very useless CDs that may as well be a game launcher that shut down.
HairyEwok
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
You’d be amazed, Forza 4 works on Windows 98, i shit you not, there’s a vid that shows the guy playing the game on a Windows 98 system, yes the graphics are a bit wonky but the game can be played.
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
Black and White cannot work on Windows 7+. I don’t even think on XP. I’m not talking about new stuff working on old OSs. I’m talking old games working on my Windows 10. Which they don’t. So many of them because of defunct disc protection software that Windows now outright blocks. The rest because the game simply doesn’t work.
HairyEwok
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
Does nothing even work with compatibility mode? At the moment I’ve got carmageddon 2 (not the steam version) working on my windows 10 PC.
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
For me, nothing I’ve tried works. But it probably does depend on the specific game. And yeah there was that update last year or the year before that made it so that all CDs that were using one method of copy protection no longer worked so that sucked.
Son of Banana Jim
December 11, 2019 at 16:14
I wonder if my old Morrowind disks wil work on windows 10.
Admiral Chief
December 11, 2019 at 15:42
Windows IS your MAIN launcher technically 😛
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 15:42
To be fair, all you’d need to do to achieve that is to stop reading the news. Just play your games and watch your streams. Easy.
Admiral Chief
December 11, 2019 at 15:42
When it all boils down to the basics…yes, that is all you need for your happiness.
I’ve been looking SO DAMN frequently at the news lately for SOME shed of GOOD news about the power situation…makes me angry
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 15:42
The only thing I read the news for is to find out what level of load shedding we’re at today. Otherwise, I just don’t care.
Admiral Chief
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f575eda2728f2be1902f23c054527562a1ff038dcd96a9cf84fcc8873d6da7d3.png
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
I want to laugh. I do. But then I took a stage 6 load shedding to the knee.
Admiral Chief
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
Dude, the thing is…..THAT IS THE ACTUAL SITE’S RESPONSE
I took a screenshot of that myself, no image hackery, nothing
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
I realised, lol. That’s WHY I want to laugh.
HairyEwok
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
And if you actually get into the site, you’re welcomed with a message that states that we’re not loadshedding at the moment.
Son of Banana Jim
December 11, 2019 at 16:14
? You know some days I wonder if this reality isn’t just a simulation.
Jacques Van Zyl
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
Fair enough, but keeping abreast of these things is kinda important too. I hated how I missed out on convos with friends over not having seen GoT or Rick and morty or whatever, so the news forms part of the social aspect of my games in that sense and makes it difficult to just outright avoid.
I do try not to bitch too often about things though, and enjoy the positive. Like COD MW is cross platform, Halo is great on PC and some games are just art and pure joy.
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 15:49
I think that’s one of the great things about gaming news that differs from regular news – we get positive stories too. We get the good and the bad, not just the latter.
And I also concede your point from the social aspect, doing what I suggested does require a level of disconnect that doesn’t gel well with social needs. 🙂
Jacques Van Zyl
December 11, 2019 at 16:06
It is awesome that we do get good news as well. General news is disproportionately a crapstorm of negative vibes.
With games though, we get the good news too. In a lovely little curated article on here at the end of each week 🙂
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 16:06
hah! The best article. 😀
Admiral Chief
December 11, 2019 at 16:06
The good, the bad, and the D
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 18:17
Hey when he wears the batmask he’s not THAT ugly…
HairyEwok
December 11, 2019 at 16:06
These are the articles of our lives.
Jacques Van Zyl
December 11, 2019 at 16:06
Like 1Ups through the frags of an hourglass…
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 16:06
Out…
(though I’ll follow right after for getting the reference)
HairyEwok
December 11, 2019 at 16:06
Eh, was worth it XD
Admiral Chief
December 11, 2019 at 16:06
I liked it, back in you go!
Pariah
December 11, 2019 at 16:06
Dunno if you guys saw my edit. But yeah. XD
Admiral Chief
December 11, 2019 at 16:14
There is no edit here!
Son of Banana Jim
December 11, 2019 at 15:42
Lol, Mixer must have them running scared. It’s good, you need healthy competition to spice things up. It’s clear that losing that greenhaired knobgoblin, whatsisface was just what they needed.
Admiral Chief
December 12, 2019 at 08:30
HAH, knobgoblin
HairyEwok
December 11, 2019 at 15:42
Well if they wanted to mix things up, that’s not happening now.
CrAiGiSh
December 12, 2019 at 08:30
I watch Tim and Lirik, so this makes me happy to see.