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Comment by LandoCalrissian | Hacker News Reader

This had been in the cards for a long time now. Justin.tv was a huge liability since there were so many streams running pirated content. They were really smart in acknowledging the success of video game streaming the platform was having and focusing their efforts there. Honestly one of the better pivots I have seen.

I think they are a really smart company, it will be interesting to see what happens post Google.

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Was re-reading "Why TV Lost" essay by PG (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=501696), which seemed inspired by Justin.tv. A lot of the points in the essay from 5 years ago were really telling, including the role of piracy in the user experience.

One interesting excerpt: "The somewhat more surprising force was one specific type of innovation: social applications... This was what made everyone want computers. Nerds got computers because they liked them. Then gamers got them to play games on. But it was connecting to other people that got everyone else: that's what made even grandmas and 14 year old girls want computers."

> Nerds got computers because they liked them. Then gamers got them to play games on. But it was connecting to other people that got everyone else

I've never seen anyone completely write IBM and Microsoft out of computing history by such absurd degree as this.

Or Apple/Aldus/Adobe for that matter.

"Nerds" got them because at the time computers could only do the things nerds wanted them to.

It makes perfect sense since they weren't really interesting to go after (no money ) and now with the potential for a huge acquisition they need to reduce exposure to lawsuits from content companies that see a gigantic treasure chest almost ready to pop open.

Is there any money in twitch except through acquisition?

Advertising and partnering with big gaming contests can generate real revenue.

Not really. The networking costs to stream to that many users is huge. Google has the infrastructure to change the cost structure but it only works with that kind of scale.

Top twitch streamers can pull 6 figures a year. I don't know what the bototm line for twitch looks like though.

There's also subscriptions. People will pay $5 to subscribe to a channel for a month, half of which goes to Twitch (other half to the streamer).

In addition to just subscribing to 1 channel, people can also subscribe to "Twitch Turbo," with gives all the money to Twitch.

game publishers also have paid twitch for front-page visibility during release hype.

I have a feeling they pay quite a bit.

Ads, subscriptions and merchandise all come to mind.

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