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Comment by wilde | Hacker News Reader

Right before this they chose to exit Korea. https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2023/12/05/an-update-on-twitch-in-...

that has nothing to do with staffing. Korea has a uniquely hostile ISP market where service providers want to charge foreign services ridiculous amounts (versus peering agreements in most markets) for access to Korean consumer networks

Korea has a philosophy of local conglomerates first and foreign companies only existing if they prop the local conglomerate up.

It's a very good strategy as the Korean market is lucrative and the Korean companies have opportunities to spread worldwide. (they just suck at it)

Twitch got sent a foreigner-tax and didn't pay it, that's all. Korea already has a thriving version of Twitch called AfreecaTV. (edit: Oh it's not that thriving on their international site, maybe Korean site is better.)

> (they just suck at it)

That's the counter-argument.

As they don't have competition from global products, they can deliver worse products and don't have the need to improve.

This can be seen in many markets with import restrictions/tarifs.

No, they really just suck at it as a culture. Tech in Korea is terrible and startups are even worse. The culture may be set by this big players though, that's for sure. It's not about competition leading to this. This is just a "grab" based on the great success of international market trade from Korean companies like Samsung, LG, etc. The same way Facebook and others call Chinese tech terrorism, they earned the privilege locally to hinder competition.

>Korea has a philosophy of local conglomerates first and foreign companies only existing if they prop the local conglomerate up.

I don't doubt that there is some degree of domestic favoratism—it would be surprising if there weren't any—but Korea was for years the last bastion of Internet Explorer because of government requirements, as opposed to Chrome, Firefox, or some special Korea-reskinned Chromium. iPhone has lots of market share despite Samsung.[1] Relevant to this discussion, Korean players going back to Starcraft a quarter century ago were and are well known for competing in and livestreaming mostly non Korean-developed videogames.

[1] Yes, I know about Apple being a Samsung customer

What does this have to do with my comment? This just sounds like you wrote a bunch of funny Korean computer history facts.

Interesting. Is it true what they claim? Why is it so much more costly for them to operate in Korea?

Korea changed the pricing model for network traffic to be "sending party pays". For something like OGN that has a literal TV channel it's less of an issue, but for something like twitch that is only Internet, and tons of video, it's more difficult.

>Korea changed the pricing model for network traffic to be "sending party pays".

the pricing model for network traffic to be "sending party pays by volume" and "receiving party pays flat rate".

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