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YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion?
- axeny 12y agoOnce upon a time : "Google acquired YouTube for 1.65$ bln" Am I the only one who feels that things start becoming too "boomy"?
- rinon 12y agoDoes anyone have any other confirmation of this? Seems like a crazy rumor, but... maybe?
- NicoJuicy 12y agoIt seems logical, i noticed more articles concerning Twitch. So probably Google picked that up in their big data analytics. An acquisition would seem logical then.
- vdaniuk 12y agoIf confirmed, this would definitely be a smart decision. Twitch will be extremely important in ecosystem development as e-sports break in the mainstream worldwide. Lots of engaged eyeballs. Google near monopoly on online video market bugs me though, community at large would benefit from multiple players and more competition.
- korzun 12y agoOne will argue that 'e-sports' already peaked in 2002.
- amelim 12y agoI disagree. Games like Dota 2 and League of Legends are filling sports stadiums and giving out multi-million dollar prize pools these days. If anything, at least in the United States, they are on the rise.
- vdaniuk 12y agoSure, but that may have been just a local peak. "e-sports 2.0" will hit really big, at the scale of social networks. We just need a killer game for the post-pc era.
- JetSpiegel 12y ago> We just need a killer game for the post-pc era Famous last words.
- im3w1l 12y agoAs time goes on the non-gamer generations die off. The gamers grow richer and their willingness to pay increase. The new generations will probably also game.
- objclxt 12y agoThe question isn't whether people will game - the question is whether eSports will continue to grow as it does now. Being a gamer and being into eSports aren't one and the same. I play a lot of games, I don't watch a lot of eSports (it doesn't interest me). Not that I'm saying the market won't grow - on the contrary, I think it will continue to do so. It's a very small market compared to sports generally ($1 billion would barely buy you a top class sports team, let alone a network like ESPN).
- im3w1l 12y agoI don't watch sports and I don't watch gaming streams either. But I think it's an interesting phenomenon so I've asked my friends that do why they do it. It seems to be a mix of excitement about what is going to happen and wanting to learn the tricks of the pros. People generally seem like watching sports/esports they themself participate in. I don't see these trends disappearing or diminishing.
- Grue3 12y agoYou're forgetting that people grow out of gaming. Once you have a job and a family, gaming just isn't as fun anymore.
- ZachPruckowski 12y agoThey grow out of playing video games perhaps, but there's a whole world of content for folks who still like video games but don't play them as much anymore.
- GFischer 12y agoIt's still fun, you just don't have the time anymore (I feel really bad if I take out a 3-hour chunk of time to play a game, or a real-time game which demands 1-hour of continuous focus). Much as I don't play football anymore but still watch it, I also follow some games :) and so do many friends in their late 30s / 40s with families (mostly the same ones as others in the thread, like Magic: The Gathering, League of Legends, Hearthstone, etc.).
- keypusher 12y agoEsports is far bigger now than it was 10 years ago. League Of Legends and Dota 2 are far bigger than the audeinces Starcraft or Counterstrike ever generated. Tournaments are now being held on sports stadiums in the US and EU. LoL world championships last year drew 35 million viewers, and filled the Staples Center in LA. The Dota 2 International tournament this year will likely top a $7 million prizepool, and sold out Key Arena in Seattle. Esports is just getting started.
- whatrippingfun 12y agoAgreed about the growing e-sports market. Plus the Twitch Plays Pokemon experiment showed how it could break in to the casual market as well.
- alexcroox 12y agoNot just that, don't the new consoles have options to stream direct to Twitch? I don't remember seeing that option for Youtube...
- karangoeluw 12y ago> Reps for YouTube and Twitch declined to comment. Yeah. I call this just a rumor.
- objclxt 12y ago...a publicly traded company like Google is not going to comment on acquisition rumors, for many, many reasons. Variety normally has good sources - if they're reporting it, a deal is almost certainly being discussed. Maybe it won't complete, but this isn't some random posting on Secret here.
- dublinben 12y agoYour comment made me wonder. Is there any site where people (users or editors) track and check up on predictions like this made by various media outlets? I'd find it really helpful if I could point to a database showing that Variety or WSJ had a 90%+ accuracy in predictions like this, whereas another site might have a 50% accuracy.
- corin_ 12y agoThe thing is that this report is that it is being discussed, that doesn't mean it will complete, and if it doesn't then this would lower Variety's "accuracy" %, even if they were entirely accurate about the discussion going on.
- philrapo 12y agoActually, a study on this just came out: http://www.bus.umich.edu/ConferenceFiles/2014-Mitsui-Finance-Symposium/files/W_Sosyura_RumorHasIt.pdf http://www.bus.umich.edu/ConferenceFiles/2014-Mitsui-Finance... From a 3rd party summary: "...Kenneth Ahern at the University of Southern California and Denis Sosyura at the University of Michigan, reviewed 2,142 articles written about 501 rumors between 2000 and 2011. Of those rumors, only 167 were followed by a public bid for the company. The Wall Street Journal was the most prolific publisher of such articles, with 158 during the time period. It was followed by Dow Jones Newswires with 67 and the New York Times with 38. “The rumors published in the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones News Service are also more accurate than the average rumor, with accuracy rates of about 39%, compared to 33% for the average rumor,” wrote the researchers. “In contrast, the Los Angeles Times and NYT Blogs have accuracy rates less than 20%.”
- minimaxir 12y agoIt's worth noting that Twitch partially became popular because it wasn't YouTube, and gamers could stream without content restrictions (e.g. copyright and region) Miraculously, this could end up making YouTube comments even worse.
- jds375 12y agoWhile I do see this being an excellent acquisition for YouTube if true, I do agree. I don't see how YouTube could reconcile it's copyright stance with how Twitch fundamentally works.
- mikeleeorg 12y agoIF this is true, I would think a lot of due diligence and legal counsel was discussed before moving forward. Especially with a deal this size. And if that's the case, perhaps YouTube would be adopting Twitch's less restrictive copyright policies. Because otherwise, what else would YouTube get out of Twitch?
- Afforess 12y agoHa. Your naiveté is cute. This deal is all about buying out the competition. It's not about streaming. Youtube could have streaming if they wanted to, without the 1B.
- pas 12y agoYoutube has streaming. Also probably a bit different target audience and market. Plus, it's likely that they'll just make the sadfucked G+ a requirement and be done with it, no mucking with what works.
- free2rhyme214 12y agoExactly. It's about owning the market and removing a potential competitor who saps money from YouTube. It's a smart move for Google.
- dshankar 12y agoThis is now probably Y Combinator's largest acquisition!
- diziet 12y agoBiggest out of any incubator ever, if it happens -- beating out Angelpad's Mopub being acquired by Twitter for 350M.
- robryan 12y agoIf they do acquire Twitch I hope that they still let it run separately and just improve the back end (as while it has improved it still lags for a lot of people around the world). I worry if they tried to roll it into youtube that it would turn people away. Their numbers are pretty dependent on a small number of League/ Dota/ Hearthstone and a few other games casters and steamers.
- kawsper 12y agoI agree, Twitch livestreams is unwatchable for me most of the times I have tried to use it. Youtube on the other hand, while available, have worked quite good.
- Trufa 12y agoIt's funny that my experience is the complete opposite, I wonder if it's just our confirmation bias, or the fact that we are too small a sample. It could also be that us being in different countries (I assume) impacts a lot in our experiences.
- baby 12y agoHere in France both twitch and youtube are both unusable if you're using some providers like Free.
- kawsper 12y agoI didn't provide enough information, streaming from both Twitch and Youtube works flawlessly from London where I am located now.
- robryan 12y agoYeah, different countries/ providers really impacts peoples experience. On the whole it does seem to be better for more people now though.
- onewaystreet 12y agoThere's something wrong on your end because Twitch's streams haven't had problems since they introduced the 30 second delay last year.
- Spockulus_Rift 12y agoha at Vimeo banning all gamer video content. Didn't work out so well for them.
- arrrg 12y agoThat’s sad. Less competition, worse both for those watching and making content. Makers of (gaming-related) content for YouTube – worried about the future of YouTube – have often already been relying on Twitch to provide them some stability, to stand on more than one leg. This competition also insured that YouTube couldn’t do literally anything. Makers of content had a place to go if things didn’t work out. This is a potentially great move for Google and more specifically YouTube, but I don’t see any upside for anyone else (ignoring those profiting from the sale for the moment).
- smoyer 12y agoMy son watches a lot of Starcraft tournaments on Twitch and his immediate response was that YouTube might actually improve the infrastructure so that they could handle streaming to everyone who wants to watch.
- bdz 12y agoSure, THIS CONTENT IS UNAVAILABLE IN YOUR REGION
- Thaxll 12y agoTheir infrastructure is good enough, they're able to stream to 180k+ viewers in HD without problems.
- coralreef 12y agoGeo-wise, I believe they have issues in Europe
- smoyer 12y agoBig tournaments often refuse HD connections and revert to 720p or 480p ... it's not our Internet connection.
- addandsubtract 12y ago720p is HD though.
- winthrowe 12y agoEven if it's technically 'hd' 720p is still an ugly rescaling experience.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- bluthru 12y agoMaybe it's just me, but I associate YouTube video with buffering, overcompression, and popups.
- tomeric 12y agoTwitch has rapidly become the site I stay on the longest, mostly for Hearthstone and Magic the Gathering streams. It's the first time I enjoy watching a "sport" live. Just a few hours ago I decided to pay for a Twitch account in order to not see ads, something I wish YouTube would allow me to do (I don't want to use AdBlock, because I think it's unethical). I hope that if this is true, it's a feature that YouTube will copy and not one that will be disabled in the future.
- NicoJuicy 12y agoI didn't find pricing on the Twitch site. But for 9$/month (looked it up), i'd probably pay for YouTube to, if that means more copyrighted content is available to me with no ads
- owenwil 12y agoThis is disappointing. YouTube's 'community' is extremely toxic, I can imagine if Twitch is rolled into it, it'll die a long, slow death.
- thomasfortes 12y agoTwitch community is also pretty toxic. Most of the time the biggest streamers put their chats in sub mode (paying supporters) to avoid it.
- tehwebguy 12y agoRecently I noted an anecdotal improvement: more gamers seem to be saying that a winning player "shit on" another player instead of saying they "raped" them.
- AndyKelley 12y agoAnd why is that better? After you think of an answer, replace occurrences of "rape" with "shit on" and you'll have my counter-argument.
- hornetblack 12y agoSeems a bit like Something Awful. They have a one time fee before you can post anything.
- mutagen 12y agoI've seen this model successfully used on a variety of small and medium sized communities, Metafilter likely the largest example. While it doesn't seem to generate runaway fortunes, it allows online communities to survive the onslaught of spam and trolls.
- jewbacca 12y agoThe Twitch chat is half the value of the stream-watching experience for me. The "character" of the Twitch chat is valuable. The manically insane hivemind, with all the juvenilia and "shittiness" that is inherent to it, is a roiling primordial stew of genuinely worthwhile culture. It's the birthplace of memes in both the vulgar sense and the higher sense of that word, and, to me, feels like 4chan in its early days. The ecstatic chaos of the chat during an unmanageably large event is a unique and deeply valuable thing. It was why Twitch Plays Pokemon was such a massive phenomenon. Channels which set their chats to subscriber-only mode are shooting themselves in the foot. I've always desperately craved a comparable live mass chat experience for non-gaming-related events, eg during a football game, or a televised cultural event or major news story.
- free2rhyme214 12y agoJustin Kan is now going to be pretty rich. Good for him. Congrats!
- scotty79 12y agoSemi-related question... Do you know who came up with an idea of allowing companies to own other companies (and when)?
- amirmc 12y agoProbably at the same time corporations were granted legal personhood. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
- raldi 12y agoIn most free countries, things are allowed by default. If you want to restrict something, then the onus is on you to pass a law.
- scotty79 12y agoSo if I want my chair to own a website and collect revenue from ads it can? And I won't be taxed a penny since it's not me who earns this money?
- Maarten88 12y agoCompared to recent other aquisitions, 1 billion somehow seems like a bargain. Twitch has clear potential to play an important role in the future in TV and entertainment. Compare that to i.e. Snapchat...
- joosters 12y ago$1 billion but all in cash. Sensible sellers...
- Maarten88 12y agoWell, the buyer also happens to have plenty cash laying around in offshore locations, waiting to be used for things like this.
- arjunnarayan 12y agoCan offshore cash be used for acquisitions without being taxed on repatriation?
- notatoad 12y agoit'll be taxed on repatriation, but it doesn't have to be repatriated to be used. if you buy something with foreign cash, it's the seller's job to get it into their country.
- relampago 12y agoYes I agree totally. Not to mention the crazy growth of eSports.
- jonathansizz 12y agoHow much of a bargain does the original Google acquisition of YouTube, for $1.65 billion, seem today? Less than one tenth of what Facebook are paying for WhatsApp!
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- bdz 12y agoYou now need a Google+ account to spam Kappa And in before every popular channel gets shut down for copyright infringement...
- kl4m 12y agoYou already need to link with a Facebook account to post on the biggest channels.
- mhartl 12y agoWow, congrats to the Twitch team!
- bobbles 12y agoI wonder how companies like Sony feel about this considering a part of their service is now owned by Google.
- runevault 12y agoI hadn't even considered this, as both the PS4 and Xbox One have stuff in the core system for streaming to twitch (though PS4 also has UStream IIRC). That's an... interesting wrinkle.
- TorKlingberg 12y agoYes, this could be really interesting. Microsoft's Xbox One has Twitch integration, while Google refuses to make a YouTube app for Windows phone. I could imagine Microsoft looking for alternative streaming services.
- hookey 12y agoI know of some Twitch streamers who migrated to Twitch entirely and stopped using YouTube because of what it had turned into. Where will they go to now?
- jonlucc 12y agoIf Youtube screws this up and drives away the users, there will likely be an alternative that rises. That's how Twitch got so big, so it might be able to happen again.
- KalobT 12y agoA lot of people are saying this is a bad move because insert reason that contradicts YouTube's existence. But consider Tumblr's sale to Yahoo! and nothing changed. Google bought YouTube when Google has 1% of the internet traffic. YouTube already had 6% [2006] (and is the worlds most popular site per unique visitors). To be honest, I'm surprised MSFT didn't try to buy them first.
- tjmc 12y agoWow - what an amazing ride to acquisition. To think it all started when Justin strapped a camera to his head! Congrats guys!
- nedwin 12y agoJustin Kan = 2 acquisitions in 2014. Not a bad result. Has anyone else done that?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- free2rhyme214 12y agoHere's an idea: Google buys Twitch and shuts it down. Thus making people go directly to YouTube to stream. But something more realistic is they buy Twitch and then integrate it into YouTube so everyone has to use YouTube to stream everything. Smart.
- programminggeek 12y agoIt's interesting that YouTube is acquiring Twitch and not Google. I realize that's sort of a smallish point, but it's interesting how that might be announced officially. Google obviously owns YouTube, but in terms of branding and identity and control, it's interesting.
- aet 12y agoMaybe want to keep video under "YouTube LLC" in case they ever sell, or taxes?
- azakai 12y agoI think this is not a smallish point. It implies that Twitch will be under YouTube, and not kept independent in parallel to YouTube inside Google. That says something about the plans for integration.
- wildmXranat 12y agoTime for for Twitch V.2. in my opinion. There is so much copyrighted material on Twitch streamed by users, whether it games, music etc that it would throw youtube TM-auto filter into overdrive.
- escaped_hn 12y agoIronically, most copyrighted music on twitch is basically a background process of a youtube video playing.
- trevmckendrick 12y agoWas Twitch a YC company?
- Dobbs 12y agoTwitch is (was) Justin.tv which is a YC company.
- jwecker 12y agoJustin.tv was part of the summer 2007 y-combinator batch (with dropbox and disqus among others). Twitch branched off of justin.tv a few years ago (I think technically part of the same legal entity at the moment but I'm not sure- they were trying to separate the infrastructures etc. when I left). Emmett, the CEO of Twitch, is also a partner at Y-combinator if that hasn't changed.
- ricree 12y agoThey spun off of Justin.tv, which was in YC summer 07.
- burritofanatic 12y agoOne summer night in 2007, I found myself playing poker with Justin Kan in a living room of the "Y-Combinator" building in San Francisco. Emmett Shear may have been there, but amongst the crowd in the living room was Steve Huffman, who was playing around with a new electric guitar, and Alexis Ohanian who was doodling on paper. I didn't know what reddit was at the time, nor did I know that the acquisition by Conde Nast had occurred -- I only connected the dots a several years later. After seeing this headline, I can't help but think that the power of networks is real, as is the results of deliberate, focused dedication to one's direction and craft. Pretty awesome stuff, congratulations!
- Orangeair 12y agoWhy on Earth would Twitch let themselves be bought by a company that was in the news just a few months ago for systematically destroying the Let's Play community?
- Liongadev 12y agoMoney
- gedrap 12y agoLet's not pretend, many of us would do the same. Many people would quickly forget their opinion for $1M. And we are talking a billion. Can't judge those guys.
- ntumlin 12y agoIt kind of makes me sad to think of all the bad things I would do/let happen for $1 billion, or even $1 million.
- scrollaway 12y agoI'd do a lot of bad things for a few millions. I do believe I'd spend a large part of the rest of those billions making things right. I hope.
- moistgorilla 12y agoa billion all in cash
- kyrra 12y agoFor reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Let%27s_Play_%28video_gaming%29#Legal_issues http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Let%27s_Play_%28vi... I would argue that if twitch got big enough, they would have to deal with the same issues YouTube does today.
- toastedzergling 12y agoI wonder how many more months I have until I'm required to use a Google+ login to chat on twitch.
- J_ 12y agoDoes anyone roughly know what Twitch's revenue/profitability is? I know that they're pretty profitable, but I'm not sure to what extent. 1 billion USD seems somewhat low considering Snapchat was valued at 3.5 billion, and I'm pretty sure their revenues are non existent in comparison to Twitch's revenues.
- tomasien 12y agoCongrats to Justin and everyone involved in Twitch! As a side note: most of my friends are LoL fans, and I seriously believe professional gaming will be one of the major professional sports in the next few years, perhaps on the level of Hockey. They're super normal, social, extroverted people - yet they'll interrupt a trip to make us watch a LoL match on Twitch. They all came of it independently too. I really believe Twitch could have been a big, independent company. They did what they thought was right and I NEVER want to be that guy that craps on acquisitions, but I wish this one hadn't happened. I was rooting for Twitch big time. Still, very happy for them, hope YouTube does this right! I assume if everyone doesn't Riot (pun intended) the technical chops at YouTube will actually make Twitch a much more pleasant place.
- mkal_tsr 12y agoSame here. As a user of Twitch, I do not want this to happen. As a person with common sense, if I had an acquisition offer for $1 billion on the table, I'd sell out so freaking fast.
- sergiotapia 12y agoI hate YouTube with a passion, this is terrible news for Twitch users. YouTube is absolutely dreadful and makes design decisions that just go against common sense. This is a terrible loss. :/ Will I still be able to see Twitch streams on my PS4? Blergh.
- relampago 12y agoAfter reading this headline my first reaction was a verbal "aww man!" I don't really know why. Is it that I don't trust google? Maybe, but I think it's more that I like supporting the little guy and not the BnL's of the world. When I hear of an acquisition like this, thinking of Valve, I fear the brands I love will never be the same.
- Nanzikambe 12y agoTwitch is massive in the Eve Online community along with other MMOs precisely because it isn't Youtube and allows streamer to play whatever background music they chose. I can a fairly substantial move away from it if Youtube begin applying the policy that removes all audio, if even a snippet of something copyrighted is detected.tracks for
- creativityland 12y agoThis will be interesting given the recent Google Plus integration into YouTube. Will the same happen to Twitch?
- tpeng 12y agoWSJ confirms talks -- "early stage" "deal isn't imminent" http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304422704579570601736756672?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories&mg=reno64-wsj http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230442270...
- elinchrome 12y agoNewbie question here. How can youtube acquire things? Wasn't youtube acquired by google? So isn't it google acquiring?
- benguild 12y agoWhy is this worth $1bil?
- capred 12y agoIt's the largest streaming site in the world and could possibly be making 10 figures / year. YouTube isn't dishing out money just because they are really nice people.
- vecio 12y agoI don't know what this means to my startup Shou.TV
- dang 12y agoSince this is unconfirmed, we added a question mark to the title.
- mbesto 12y agoSurely, YC knows whether this is true or not :) But in all seriousness, shouldn't it just say the original title - "YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion: Sources". The Sources implying it's not publically confirmed, right?
- dang 12y agoThat headline still seems overstated given that other stories are contradicting it. I suppose I should mention that I have zero information about this, other than what's appeared on HN.
- tomasien 12y agoThis tweet from a friend I assumed hated YouTube and loved Twitch sums up why this might actually be a home run https://twitter.com/macpheed/status/468237136882597888 https://twitter.com/macpheed/status/468237136882597888
- cpeterso 12y agoWhy is this labeled a "YouTube acquisition" instead of Google?
- firat 12y agoTwitch.tv + Google Glass will be interesting.
- room271 12y agoSurely this is a massive competition concern and should be blocked on such grounds?!
- ZachPruckowski 12y agoThere aren't many barriers to entry in this field though. It's not a situation like a utility/ISP where you can only feasibly have one last-mile connection due to permits or limited radio spectrum. It's not even something like a nuclear reactor which costs $10B and a decade before you can flip the switch. I'm not saying I could build a streaming site in my closet this weekend, but it's not impossible for competitors to enter the space (or existing competitors to grow in the space) so long as Google/YT doesn't too anything too anti-competitive.
- room271 12y agoI have to disagree with this strongly. There are significant economies to scale in any streaming service. For example, in terms of costs (streaming services require a lot of hardware). But also in terms of branding and reaching a critical mass in terms of content.
- Natriceus 12y agoMy guess is that people who fled from Youtube to Twitch will just move on to other streaming sites, which in turn just helps to splitter up various communities even more.
- tyrrvk 12y agocurious is Twitch is seeing the writing on the way wrt net neutrality? They see big fees incoming from the ISP's to stream their content and decide to get under Googles wing now...
- sjg007 12y agoCongrats to Justin and co... including ycombinator. Big exit.