Twitch: New TOS bans multi-streaming/simulcasting | Hacker News Reader

Twitch: New TOS bans multi-streaming/simulcasting

twitch.tv

76 pointsobittner50 comments

More importantly, the new TOS bans in-stream ads (i.e. burned-in sponsorship logos) which is how most events on Twitch earn revenue:

> Twitch has the exclusive right to monetize the Twitch Services, including without limitation, the exclusive right to sell, serve, and display advertisements on the Twitch Services. This means you may not, nor may you allow a third party to, insert or embed prerecorded advertising units into your live stream, including without limitation video advertisements (whether pre-, mid-, or post-roll); display or “banner” advertisements; and audio advertisements.

https://twitter.com/zachbussey/status/1666111039736258561

I assume this also applies to donations?

> i.e. burned-in sponsorship logos

This is actually not something that is banned but they do call it "limited". One of the images on the tweet[0] shows that "On-stream brand overlays are limited to 3% of screen size." I'd imagine the mention of "banner" advertisements is for logos which take up more than 3% of the screen.

[0] https://twitter.com/zachbussey/status/1666111039736258561/ph...

Somebody on twitter pointed out that twitches own example of an overlay that is 3% of the screen, seems like it may exceed 3% of the example image, not by a whole lot, perhaps it is 3.5% or so, but still... Be interesting to segment and measure.

Like honestly, I feel like most people have trouble conceptually 3% of the area of the screen. Like I see a stream with a sponsor logo over a small portion, and without literally counting pixels, knowing is something is 3% or 5% does not seem easy.

So, product placement it is, then!

This will kill all major streamer events, like the OTK live show they had in Las Vegas last week or the Streamer Awards. I also find it strange how YouTube has no problem with it but somehow Twitch makes a big deal about it.

If anyone is curious about the production quality of those shows:

The Streamer Awards 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnoiaRk7eqM&t=1830s

OTK Elevated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1fdisLMwIc&t=1202s

In Germany, most Twitch streamers are pissed off at twitch anyway. They only want to chip in 10k for big events for example - private tv broadcasters are putting in way more money and getting the community to their sites.

Also: The old 70/30 deals that some had, expired. 5€ subs got turned to 4€ subs so twitch has to pay less for twitch prime subs.

But there's no real alternative, YouTube streaming is terrible (no community feeling), kick.com is the refugee island for casino streamers.

I didn't even know there were german twitch streamers, I thought they required a broadcasting license to stream

Just looked it up, since I remembered hearing about it and apparently there are some new rules where you only need one if you average more than 20000 viewers.

That's the case for just 2 streamers in Germany. No other streamer had more than 20k average viewers in the last 30 days, but some are close, so they might have one as well.

I wasn't sure if this was a joke about overlicensing of everything in Germany, but alas no.

I think it's even funnier because it's true

So things like GDQ marathons would need to change or get special permission. GDQ is literally the only stream I've ever seen that directly embedded video advertisements for sponsors. Clearly that can no longer be done.

But Lets ignore that and focus on their explained 3% overlays being allowed, as some sibling comments mention. (Which weirdly is not mentioned in the TOS at all, but only supplementary material).

Let's look only at one aspect of their marathon, one that seems innocuous. They have a banner area at the bottom, that often has various stats or other information. Ocassionally it may show the events own logo. That is clearly fine. And sometimes it shows the charity's logo. Is that a problem? Well, if they received literally nothing from the charity, it would not be sponsored content, so being a big banner on the screen is fine.

However, I know that that PCF for AGDQ actually pay GDQ a fixed amount for running the livestream, to help partially offset production costs. Which technically makes them a sponsor, in addition to being the charity benefiting. (They make far far more from the event then they spend obviously.)

Whoops. Clearly that must go, I guess.

And I guess they cannot have bigger logos of other sponsors be put up on screen even briefly during breaks, except I guess if they do it by way of physicals carboard cutouts or similar, as there is no only a few seconds exception or anything like that ...

What are companies like Riot, and CSGO hosts going to do?

They run the largest viewing events on Twitch, and they also simulcast on YouTube.

How are they suppose to make money to run these events if they aren't allowed to sell advertising?

They might be forcing them to only stream on YouTube going forward.

Is Twitch having money issues? This type of "it hurt itself in its confusion", "fuck everybody that likes us" behavior is typical for failing companies but I thought Twitch was healthy.

Unlikely when they are subsidiary of Amazon + they have near monopoly. Mixer got shutdown, Youtube Gaming and Facebook Gaming doesn't even come close.

Potentially due to Kick providing some competitive pressure. I've noticed a lot of smaller streamers multi-streaming with Kick mentioned in their stream title.

Alot of companies seem to be having money issues now that they're not being bankrolled by infinite loans, such as Reddit

> For clarity, you may Simulcast on mobile-first services that support live streaming.

As I read it, this means that TikTok or similar services aren't covered by this ban.

Antitrust enforcement when? This behavior seems very anticompetitive.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_dealing

Exclusive dealing is pretty different.

Twitch isn't selling something to streamers, and giving them noncompetitive terms.

They are paying them to stream, which is the opposite.

It is more like putting limitations on what advertising a NASCAR driver can put on the car you are paying them to drive.

I still dont like the decision from twitch. Let people do what they can to make money and keep streaming.

I think donations are where the NASCAR analogy falls apart. Twitch keeps a percentage of donations made on the platform, which starts to look a lot like Twitch selling a platform (and access to users) where the pricing is a percentage of revenue.

I don't think Twitch paying the streamers really nullifies that, otherwise companies could escape an Exclusive Dealing conviction by just adding an "oh, and we pay you $3" clause to their contracts.

Twitch makes more sense as a company if they're a seller. There's a clear story there where streamers buy access in exchange for a percentage of their revenue on the platform. If they're a buyer, what are they buying from streamers?

Just to add on top, I think streamers only get money from ads if they're at some tier with Twitch (partner, I think?). There's a whole bunch of streamers that aren't getting paid anything directly by Twitch, and are only getting donations after Twitch has taken their cut.

I routinely watch streamers with double-digit viewers that run ads for the profit sharing so I don't think there's a cut off there.

As for what twitch is buying, they are buying the performance and or content, not dissimilar from Netflix or cable TV. If you follow the money, all the donations and all of their ad Revenue go to Twitch, which then cuts a check. The exception as I understand it is sponsored content ( playing a specific game) or extra in stream ads which is what twitch is trying to Crackdown on. Some streamers have sponsored banners on stream or play videos ads from advertisers that contracted directly with them and not twitch.

The situation is somewhat complicated because streamers have the option to select how many twitch ads they play on their Channel. If they are running their own ads that twitch doesn't get a cut of, then they won't want to run as many ads from twitch

> As for what twitch is buying, they are buying the performance and or content, not dissimilar from Netflix or cable TV.

Netflix or cable TV are buying broadcasting rights, or licenses to broadcast the content. Twitch can't be doing the same thing, because payment happens after the performance, not before.

> If you follow the money, all the donations and all of their ad Revenue go to Twitch, which then cuts a check.

That's just a passthrough to take a cut. It's no different than Apple's App Store or PayPal. I think it would be hard to argue that Apple is buying apps from developers, or that PayPal is buying from vendors.

Google would actually be a good example here. They both have an app store and can provide the ads for mobile apps. Would you say they're buying apps? Or are they selling a platform for apps?

It's a shame there's not an easy-to-use version of Twitch where you pay your own bandwidth costs and whatnot. It would make the economics a lot clearer to everyone.

The problem is that basically no content creators could self start in that world. Right now, most of these companies benefit from having a massive pipeline of kids dreaming to be stars, who all shoot their shot at streaming. Some inevitably have a knack, or catch some fad, or something, and can generate massive revenue and replace the people who have been chewed up and extracted by the machine, because it's basically designed to burn you out.

Any content distribution system that doesn't give away a free tier would have to build it's own pipeline for training, filtering, testing, and motivating creators.

So self-start in twitch, which is free, and then move onto another platform that allows for sponsorships once you get one and can therefore afford to pay for the bandwidth.

It's not easy to move your viewership out of Twitch. Even top Twitch streamers had this difficulty so it's not going to be doable for an up and coming streamer.

Which is an indicator of the utility of the streamer vs the utility of the platform.

In a world with better social policies, the real question would be whether profiting off of teenagers marketing to other teenagers should be unregulated and whether the absurd heavy-handed selective censorship and highly questionable moral compass of Twitch Inc should be continued allowed to shape children.

If you haven't caught an audience yet then you're probably streaming to very few people. A few dollars can cover that bandwidth until you get one or two subs or donators.

I'd also venture to guess (no hard numbers) that most successful streamers -- measured as "they don't need a day job" -- started streaming as a hobby. Such a person is much more likely to be willing to spend a few dollars a month, especially considering they'll likely already have purchased a microphone and webcam.

That being said, maybe it's better for it to be free considering the people paying for such a hobby would be among this "massive pipeline of kids dreaming to be stars".

In practice there are lots of ways to stream for free to a small audience, and that is a good thing. I just don't think the idea of paying for bandwidth would be much of a barrier.

> most successful streamers -- measured as "they don't need a day job"

I think it's closer to 'Streaming is their day job'...

It's a good idea that just revitalizes the old agent-management-star relationship. I wonder if this is how they do it in Japan with their idols and such. I don't know of any single platform that they all market on, they all roll their own website and such and the agent/manager funds everything.

On the other hand, seeing it/knowing it from real life and seeing it now making anime as a standard plot is also exciting and a bit sad. See Aggretsuko and Oshi no Ko. Both are products of pop culture of Japan that reflect the current trends of this management/money first style.

What evidence do you have that getting self started is so impossible?

Common sense given economy of scale.

There’s definitely a barrier between totally free and even just a few dollars a month in bandwidth.

I agree with the sentiment but I'd love to see some numbers to that effect.

Here's my lousy attempt (someone more fluent in math than me, please correct because these numbers seem crazy to me so I concede the high probability that I am wrong).

Let's say I want to stream hd picture so bandwidth requirement would be roughly 3MB/s. That's what I presume it takes to deliver one second of hd video to a single person. Let's assume that there is some mighty compression in play and that brings it down to 1mb/s.

Let's assume I became popular enough that my servers are streaming data 24/7. that's 86 400 seconds so 86 400MB ~ 86GB. Per day. For one person to get my awesome video content constantly.

Most VPS providers give certain amount of bandwidth with the initial offerings. I am using Digital Ocean as reference which means roughly that for each 5$ (the cheapest VPS) you get 1tb (or 1000 GB) of bandwidth until they start billing for more.

So for "free" you get to send data to 1000 / 86GB = 11.6 ~ 12 people max until you start getting billed extra. Per day.

DO bills 0.01$ per GB over the limit. If it takes 86GB to deliver content 24/7 to one person, imagine a thousand. That's 860$. Per day.

Let's add some server costs and extra transfer for all the youtube-ish ui experience and I think we can land to a solid 1000$. Per. Day.

I'm not sure I'd use a VPS. Cloudflare Stream does both live streaming and on-demand video. $1 per 1,000 minutes. Not a lot better than your estimate, but it includes the server costs as they handle transcoding too. I haven't tried their player to compare with YouTube though.

https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/

Worse yet: https://medium.com/@MyLawyerFriend/lets-take-a-minute-to-tal...

Much more concerning: Sponsorship guidelines.

https://youtu.be/-5zGuFPxW88

I thought this was already prohibited by Twitch and conversely YouTube Live?

Will this change actually affect any existing Twitch streamer practices?

Banned for twitch partners. So it won't affect major streamers, but smaller ones yes.

Ah, okay. I didn’t realize that was the distinction. Thanks!

Note that being a twitch partner doesn't give you monetary benefits or a better share from bits (one-time-"donations") or subscriptions. It only gives the streamer/community a verified profile and more emojis. So perhaps some more visibility on the start page but that's it.

The big music streamers will often stream on Twitch, Instagram, and FB all at once. Looks like Instagram is fine but FB has a desktop client and may not be allowed.

TIL. Thanks!

Twitter, Reddit, Slack, Twitch

It's amazing what the era of cheap money coming to an end is exposing.

I don't see how they can enforce this. Nor should they.

This is very enforceable for the smaller group of actually profitable streamers. They're trying to make it more difficult for people to reduce their dependence on twitch.

Enforcement seems like the easy part. Simply suspend or ban accounts. I don't like the changes, but nobody has a constitutional right to stream on Twitch

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