Game over
Meta is slashing creator spending on its game-streaming service, Facebook Gaming, after handing millions of dollars to streamers over the years in a futile effort to keep up with the Amazon-owned giant, Twitch.
The creator cutbacks follow Meta’s decision in August to pull the iOS and Android versions of Facebook Gaming as the platform has struggled to carve out its place in the streaming space since launching in 2018.
Still twitching
Like Zoom, baking bread and home workouts, Twitch got a massive boost during the pandemic with people flocking to the platform to play – but mostly watch – video games on stream. However, unlike other lockdown activities, Twitch has managed to stick the landing. Indeed, data from StreamLabs reveals that the platform saw a huge uptick in the pandemic, with the total hours people spent streaming content on the service jumping to 5.1bn in the second quarter of 2020.
3 years later, activity on Twitch has moderated, with 5.7bn hours clocked in for the latest quarter. That’s down modestly from the pandemic peak of 6.5bn, but it’s still a figure that is ~5x and ~14x higher than competitors like YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming managed, respectively.
Clearly, the network effects in live streaming have never been stronger. People want to watch the most interesting streamers, and the most interesting streamers want to be watched by the most people. So strong is that network effect that, even with multimillion-dollar carrots to lure streamers away, the giants of Meta and YouTube haven’t been able to muscle in on Twitch’s territory.
