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Comment by the_duke | Hacker News Reader

They tried to integrate with XBox.

They pumped millions and millions into exclusivity deals with streamers like Ninja and Shroud, only saw small growth and then completely stalled.

Even during the recent lockdowns they remained almost flat, while others had big viewership spikes.

At some point you just have to call it quits.

The new competition besides Twitch is FB Gaming and YouTube, which can leverage existing platforms with a huge userbase.

An isolated platform that offers no value over Twitch has no chance in this environment.

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I think your analysis is dead on, the only thing I'm surprised by is that Facebook has some sort of FB Gaming streaming platform. I don't really use Facebook, but I watch a fair number of twitch streamers and let's plays and whatnot on YouTube and I've never once heard anyone mention FB Gaming.

1 Facebook owns Oculus

2 Remember FarmVille or Plants vs Zombies?

Regardless of who owns Oculus, most streamers are on Twitch.

I don't see how Farmville is relevant. Mobile games and Twitch streams don't see to be anything alike.

No most streamers have given up already because without a network effect it can take a decade to turn a profit.

Letting streamers utilize their existing social network is a potential game change for early channel growth.

> I don't see how Farmville is relevant. Mobile games and Twitch streams don't see to be anything alike.

Exactly. FB Gaming seems to be very focused on Mobile Games and other typical Facebook-Games (makes sense), not so much on Console and PC-Games.

Considering the culture of users it also makes sense. Facebook is more for casual games, who play something on the side, but don't give much for the whole culture, dedication and stuff. Twitch is more embracing the whole core-gamer-culture and youth, making it quite hard to be accessable for everyone else.

A year or two ago FB partnered with a Counter-Strike tournament organizer (ESL) for exclusive streaming rights, and that was probably the most high profile partnership I've ever seen associated with it.

It definitely did not go well for them, though; the community were not fans and they promptly went back to Twitch after their year was up. They had to have paid a pretty penny to get that deal inked!

Thing is, Facebook is just forcing views by showing a live stream on people's feed. This alone makes it grow exponentially. It also solves the biggest problem Twitch has at the moment: not being able to promote lesser known streamers. I've see plenty of unknown people streaming on Facebook with 100+ viewers. This is actually good for streamers.

> An isolated platform that offers no value over Twitch

They had value in being able to stream to your friends with .2 seconds of latency instead of 4 seconds of latency.

But Discord has moved in on that territory.

That's actually pretty great.

I think ultimately their buyout of Ninja, Shroud and others flopped hard. These guys drew huge numbers for Twitch and we're not even performing half as well on Mixer and this is not to mention that these guys we're at liberty to stream unpopular games as they pleased on Mixer because of their huge upfront payout.

I'm curious how FB Gaming (I heard it first now) could plays better than Mixer. I've heard Mixer is great about latency.

Don't forget, the original founder (who was still running Mixer even post-acquisition) quit Microsoft last year as well.

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