Google Announces YouTube Gaming 50
An anonymous reader writes: Today Google announced a major new rival to Twitch.tv: YouTube Gaming. In addition to providing structure for the gaming content YouTube already serves (like walkthroughs, reviews, "Let's Plays," speed runs, etc), it'll also be a livestreaming hub for those who like broadcasting their games or watching other people play. Each video game will have its own dedicated page, and users will be able to add games to their "collection" to see other users's videos relating to those games. YouTube Gaming will have its own dedicated app, as well as being a part of the YouTube website. Google is also touting a recommendation engine that will help gamers find more content to watch.
Didn't Google try to buy Twitch (Score:1)
So is that their plan B, turning YouTube into Twitch?
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They're owned by Amazon now.
And before they were known as Twitch.tv, they were known as Justin.tv.
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It's brilliant. I hate twitch - the bandwidth is terrible, I can't choose the resolution, the interface is slow. Youtube is smooth and works seamlessly.
copyright = nope (Score:5, Interesting)
Streamers aren't going to move to a system they can't make money on. This will fail and end up like Google+.
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Every streamer I've watched has said the're not going to touch google streaming with a 10 foot pole.
Every single one of them has said that the automated copyright control system triggers spuriously and cuts off your stream in a manner that pretty much kills your viewership. (And can cite personal experience, or can point to contemporaries that have had the same problem)
No viewers = no money = no streamers
Google's copyright system is asymmetric in that it can be triggered gamed by trolls or even people that
Re: copyright = nope (Score:1)
Wait, what? People pay money to watch other people play video games? Jesus fucking Christ. That takes passivity to a whole new level of suck.
Re: copyright = nope (Score:5, Insightful)
People have been paying money to watch other people play games for quite some time now. They called it sports.
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Quit being an asshole, you're going to hurt his feelings.
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Wait, what? People pay money to watch other people play video games?
Yes, for the past 8000 years or so. Where the fuck have you been?
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Well, there are only 2 kinds of people:
Those that do it, and those that complain about everyone else doing it.
Re:copyright = nope (Score:5, Interesting)
How is that any different than Twitch? It's been my experience, with a significant time on the Twitch and UStream platforms, that Twitch's content matching is some of the most awful and draconic of the matching algorithms. They don't block out live ads, but for a 30 minute chunk after "last detection" (so first detection to last detection to +30 minutes), you receive NO advertising or clickcount revenue, and can't export "highlights" with ANY sound.
Oh, and most of my livestreams don't have extra music playing over it, just the game's natural sound and music. Nearly every week I have 2-3 claims on my streams, because the matching algorithm... MATCHED THE GAME MUSIC. And in about 50% of cases, it's ignored by their "appeals" department. In my case, it's not a LOT of revenue lost, but if I was making serious bank, it'd be a serious problem.
Stop thinking Twitch is some end-all be-all. The competition posed by YouTube (where most Twitch streamers dump their highlights, actually) will only improve the situation.
(You'll notice I didn't say much about UStream, and that's because UStream is terrible unless you're broadcasting homemade liveporn. No, really.)
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Well at least Twitch doesn't take down your stream while you're STILL streaming and then take away your rights to stream and make money entirely by disabling monetization on your entire account... Which is what google does with their current livestream feature on youtube. I will take the 30 minutes of cut audio over losing the whole thing just because some music label is throwing a fit.
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VODs on Twitch are muted for parts where copyrighted music is detected. This even includes ingame-music on GTA. It's not different.
It's quite different.
I've had youtube disable monitazation on a VLOG I made with no music - no sound what so ever other than my voice - showing a flag at the second before I said the words "I wish it would come back to me" as matching "Super Mario World 3 Level" by Nintendo.
Submitting a refute through to Nintendo resulted in Nintendo reapplying the flag against me as correct, and submitting an appeal to youtube went ignored.
After nearly six months of trying to fight it I finally took the VLOG (me talking ab
Re: copyright = nope (Score:1)
Isn't Google+ more popular than Twitter?
Twitch is so heavily used...good luck. (Score:2)
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PayPal vs Network effect (Score:3)
I'd move to it in a heartbeat.
You would, but not necessarily all the shops you visit would too.
Welcome to the network effect !
PayPal is designed in such a way that both ends of the transaction (both the merchant and the client) must use PayPal as a payment processor.
Even if you decide on your own to switch, that won't have any impact on the merchant. If they don't switch, you'll be forced to keep PayPal to be able to buy from them.
Contrast the situation with SEPA payment in Europe:
You and the merchant are completely independent and free
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That assumes you don't have any room for improvement.
I know I never watch twitch or other game streaming sites. Why? They're annoying as hell to use - every 30 seconds you get blasted with a 30 second ad at full volume, so you lose 30 seconds of video, etc.
Sure you can install adblockers and such,
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Well, there are no network effects that I'm aware of so I guess it shouldn't be a problem. A better product will be used cause there are no switching costs. Unlike say switching from Facebook to something else even if the alternative is better. In the latter scenario, a better product will not automatically get social media users cause the value of a social network increases with the number of existing users alone.
I don't see the same effect for video streaming services.
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Do you really want someone going through your garbage to complete your profile?
And shots have already been fired... (Score:1)
I'm hearing rumblings that Youtube Gaming already has some concerning rules too, like automatic strikes for playing copyrighted music (even accidentally) over a stream. I have this feeling it's going to be an uphill battle...
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To prevent the stream being taken down, you shouldn't use copyrighted content, or license the copyrighted content. If stream creators are being paid for their "work," why shouldn't the music copyright holders get paid as well?
Collections (Score:2)
So this is why they removed the super-useful feature that used to let you group your subscriptions into named groups until a few weeks ago? Because it was called "collections" and they wanted to repurpose the name for some useless video game thing nobody is going to use?
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So THATs why my playlist menu recently exploded and went random-order!
Yea I'm not sure how well this will work out for Youtube in the end.
Now personally, when I watch a let's player I'm generally watching not for the game but am watching that particular person do their thing. So I'll probably be sticking with the user subscription method instead.
I'd be less interested in a "Minecraft" channel and have to sort through all the squeeky voiced 8 year olds, and am more interested in for example "AngryJoe" revie
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Or when the major video game publishers' legal departments have filed so many copyright claims that both services lose a substantional portion of their user base.
but does the tv app have a search function? (Score:1)
does the tv app have a search function? i know twitch still doesn't
Google was seeking out contact Twitch user info (Score:4, Informative)
Not that long ago Google was posting tasks on the Amazon Mechanical Turk crowdsource job platform that asked people to visit a Twitch user account page which was provided to the worker.
They wanted to know if that twitch user had a link to a YouTube page.... they wanted to know if there was an email address..... they wanted to know if the user had had some sort monetization link on youtube.. and if there were email/twitter contacts.
I wonder if this has anything to do with that.
were they just judging how much overlap there is between the communities?
were they seeking out 'popular' people to contact them?
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I've said it before and here it is again. Within a decade, perhaps within the next 5 years, some bright young web designers will "discover" new methods of making websites that will turn out to be almost identical to the usable, intuitive, and inviting websites we had in 2008. I'm talking side navigation panes, site maps, links with actual words on them, legible text and fonts, content borders, actual fucking dense, readable, clear content instead of a 2+MB page that take 5 seconds to fade in a single login screen. In short people will discover how to make a motherfucking website [motherfuckingwebsite.com] again.
I'll be glad when that happens. Webpages are getting slow and slower with more JavaScript crap that doesn't gain anything (fine if it's an interactive Office App, but just a blog post?) It's causing me to have to retire computers simply because surfing the web is too slow. The requirements of a web page are normally pretty simple: Show text, show pictures, show links, and in select cases show videos.
I see this being used by the smaller streamers (Score:2)
The big streams already have a fan base. They know where to go, they are unlikely to risk losing a lot of viewers by moving.
On the other hand, the streamers who have a small viewership, whose list is mostly made up of new users, can defiantly benefit from the influx of having youtube suggestions that look just like normal videos that people will click. It will be a great way to establish a new user base.
Yes, there are stricter rules on what you can and can't do. You simply have to understand them and work w