Twitch Star XQC Signs $100 Million Deal With Rival Platform

Kara@kbin.social to Technology@beehaw.org – 57 points – Twitch Star Signs $100 Million Deal With Rival Platform
nytimes.com

After dealing with lots of bad PR from terrible decisions, Twitch now has to deal with one of its biggest streamers moving to another platform, Kick, with a deal larger than those of most athletes

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Good for him, if they can actually pay. And I thank Kick for letting me know that I have 0 interest in that platform. xQc's content isn't for as I'm an adult that isn't a complete asshat. Only partial, but xQc is far too toxic for me.

I mean, xQc is only one streamer. So... If there's other popular streamers who you like who migrate to Kick, then... You might find someone to watch there.

This is how mixr - or whatever it was called - died out.
They bought in a couple big streamers expecting the rest to follow.
But what makes twitch so good are the smaller communities.
They often play niche games, have their own fantastic history, raiding each other, nice people, nice streamer interactions.

Some streamers I know have talked about kick. Apparently they are offering a 95% split.
I know twitch is probably extremely inefficient, but if twitch is struggling with a 50/50 split, how the fuck can kick maintain a 95/5 split? And if you move your entire community to another platform, just for that platform to die?

YouTube is probably in the best position to rival Twitch.
But their live stream system and discovery is severely lacking

Mixr had exclusive contracts with the streamers they bought. Meaning they could only stream on Mixr.

Interestingly, Kick is going for a different approach with non-exclusive contracts, allowing XQC to stream on all other platforms as well. It sounds crazy when they’re spending $100 mill, but they’re betting on being able to bring users from other platforms over time, rather than just expecting the audience to all move over at once.

I get what the guy above is saying - first impressions mean a lot and this site wants XQC so badly they're willing to pay an absolutely obscene amount for a non-exclusive deal.

I went to the site and aside from X's stream one of the top categories was "pools & bikinis". Granted, "Casinos & Gambling" was higher up, but still, tells you a lot about what kind of site this is willing to be.

So far the only people I know joining Kick are xQc, Train and Adin Ross... if that's the kind of content they're trying to curate early on I can say with 100% certainty that its not for me.

Also doesn't help that they're funded by a gambling company

@Kara A bit of history here :

Stake (a sketchy online casinos) made Kick after Twitch banned gambling using sketchy online casinos from the platform.

XQC was one of the streamer sponsored by Stake.

Xqc got mad when another streamer (Mizkif) were campaigning to get gambling banned from Twitch, so XQC try to weaponized a girl sexual allegation against Mizkif's friend in order to cancelled Mizkif.

That is some excellent context, thanks.
I know a few streamers that have been chatting about kick. The gambling origin/backing makes it seem sketchy AF.

It’s Kick, in case you didn’t want to click the link

Can't say I've ever heard of it before but must be doing something to have $100m for this.

@Shadocvao Stake (a sketchy online casinos) made Kick after Twitch banned gambling using sketchy online casinos from the platform.

XQC was one of the streamer sponsored by Stake.

Xqc got mad when another streamer (Mizkif) were campaigning to get gambling banned from Twitch, so XQC try to weaponized a girl sexual allegation against Mizkif's friend in order to cancelled Mizkif.

@Kara @SuperSaiyanSwag

It's Stake's cryptogambling online casino business

Maybe it's just me, but something always seemed sketchy about Kick. Their ability to throw around hundreds of millions of dollars without any clear ownership smells fishy. I personally wouldn't be surprised if in 5 years there was an in depth Coffeezilla video exposing the platform.

I believe they are have been heavily invested by the owners of Stake.com the gambling platform. Pretty sure when Twitch banned gambling streams that was their cue to start or invest heavily in Kick.

Yeah, I think it's gonna be a gambling cesspool. Given the investors, that's the goal of it anyway.
It's a shame mixer had such a shit user experience, that could have been a proper twitch competitor without the sketchy gambling.

I still believe Kick will crumble to death like Mixer if it doesn't bring enough people to their crypto gambling site to make it worth it lol

Was mixer Microsoft's attempt at entering streaming?

Yep, it was active from 2016-2020.

And now that it's gone, I'm kinda sad that we lost it, because Twitch really needs the competition.

This is actually good. Twitch has become just as anti-consumer as Reddit ever since Mixer shut down.

A big similarity being Twitch and Reddit don't create the content, they rely on users of the platform. Hope this becomes a message that users can't be expendable

Is it? Alternatives are always great but everyone is saying kick is shady.

Well, good for xqc for nabbing that deal. He would be a fool not to. But $100 mil seems like a massive investment for his... 'content.' It's definitely going to attract the wrong viewers that are extremely unhealthy for the platform, severely limiting the potential for more advertisers.

The ownership of Kick.com is currently unconfirmed. However, there are signs that suggest the crypto gambling site Stake.com may be backing the project. Job listings posted by Australia-based start-up Easygo state that “Kick.com is a new venture created by the founders of Easygo and Stake.com”. Stake accounts also created and previously moderated the Kick subreddit. According to confirmation by Stake representatives, Eddie Craven, an owner of Stake, is not the owner of Kick.com, but only an investor. Trainwreck could also have a stake in the company.

Wow, Bing's search is pretty damn good and linked sources. Anyway, this is actually so predatory of a business I don't even want to delve any deeper than I did in 10 minutes. He's going to actively push users toward these gambling websites, and we all know how destructive that addiction can be.

I think this is all for show, to be honest. The New York Times broke the story, but do they even do pieces like these? Is it possible this Stake company paid for NYT to publish the article? They even include statements from Kick and xqc. I'm not a subscriber so it's a genuine question. I think the crypto gambling people and xqc have a shady partnership going on and he's not actually receiving $100 million, but definitely is getting paid. It just seems that $100 M for one person isn't fiscally reasonable. Anyway, crypto on its own is shady and combine that with gambling? Sounds like trouble.

Reminds me of when Mixer signed Ninja over to that streaming service. Let's see if Kick sticks around.

Not that Twitch chat is a flawless representation of a streamer’s overall value, but just popping in on XQC’s channel - it’s wild how many people are actually engaged and chatting. It seems like a lot of people there are only there for X.

On the flip side I remember times going into Ninja’s (same with Shroud) where there’s 30k viewers or something nuts but the chat might be scrolling slower than a mid-sized streamer’s. Just seems like more people will actually go to Kick (less professional, more “go wild”) than in the former cases with Mixer (more corporate, professional).

This seems to be a no strings attached good deal on xQc's side given the lack of exclusivity clause. Worst case scenario is a particularly bad scandal hitting the platform could tarnish xQc's reputation such as it is but that's a risk for literally any platform. However...

As a start-up, Kick is prepared to operate at a loss

Aaand the platform is doomed. Focusing on growth over viability is whats makes you a prime enshitification target.

I mean yeah Twitch definitely needs competition. It's just kinda sad when the compition is even shadier than twitch lmao

Probably a hot take but this is insane to me. I want off this fucking planet. 100 million for a streamer, what the actual fuck.

Kick also replaced Stake as car sponsor for the F1 team Alfa Romeo. Judging by the prominent logos on the car, the partnership would be very expensive too.

Paywalled. Is this an exclusive contract?

Twitch needs to get its shit together.

Not exclusive, which makes this whole thing even crazier. He can even still stream on Twitch. 2 year contract worth $70m that can hit $100m with incentives. This should let you read it.

He can't stream on twitch anymore if he broadcasts on kick though. Twitch just changed their streamer eula to say you cannot stream to any other web based live streaming service while streaming to twitch.

Which in its own might be a reason for people swichtng to kick if they have a YouTube viewership as well.

Twitch also tightened down on sponsorship in streams last week with such strict rules that they backpedaled due to community response. Seeing the timing of this deal makes me wonder if both changes might have played a party in xqc's decision.

It’s wild that it’s not even exclusive, that’s crazy.

I guess though is XQC is a gambler, right? So I’m guessing that he’ll have a bunch of times where he’s only on Kick then

Glad Twitch has a competitor, but I've never heard of Kick. Expecting this to go as well as Mixer

Mixer actually had something imo, it's a shame they sold it. MS had the $$ to spend.

Good for him! Seriously, no small feat. Now...how do I go about making $70M?