Twitch Has A New Competitor, And It's Backed By Trainwreck
The streaming space has slowly been getting more competitive over the years. Even after the fall of Mixer, new streaming services have continued to crop up. While Facebook and YouTube are certainly the most noteworthy alternatives, Twitch still remains the service most gamers would probably think of first. That said, it's become clear to many streamers that Twitch has a bit of a shady side. Many creators haven't been happy with the larger percentages of revenue it takes from their profits while failing to assist the growth of smaller streamers. Now, a new competitor has emerged, and it has the backing of none other than one of the most popular streamers in the world, Tyler "Trainwreck" Niknam.
Kick is a new streaming platform that has recently released the Beta version of its service. In a recent post from the platform's official Twitter account, it stated that, "It is very early days for us but we hope to build this together into something great. Right now we are heads down on fixing bugs and dealing with the surge in traffic but we'll have way more information soon." But what exactly is Kick? What is it planning to do differently from Twitch? And why did Trainwreck choose to get involved with the project?
Trainwreck doesn't like how Twitch does business
Trainwreck recently shared a TwitLonger where he did not mince words in describing the numerous ways in which he hasn't been satisfied with how Twitch runs its business. "Twitch pads the pockets of a handful of creators, and they are the only ones that won't admit [Twitch's] negligence toward the majority of its streamers," he said. "Twitch has built an empire off of our backs and has the audacity to spit in all of our faces by not only giving us no financial security, with its inconsistent policies, but by also cutting our pay in places that they have no right to cut." He argued that Twitch has been claiming to have the highest viewership, sponsorship, and profitability in company history while simultaneously telling streamers that the company needs to take higher percentages of revenue from streamers simply because that is the cost of running the platform.
Trainwreck also stated that, "Twitch does nearly no marketing for streamers, no discovery, and limited help in building their business. Those streamers only succeed from the blood, sweat, and time they put in themselves." He said that without these services, all Twitch does is host a website, and that the 50% of subscriptions and other forms of revenue that it claims for this service is much too high. Kick aims to do better.
Kick offers more support to small streamers
In the same TwitLonger, Trainwreck identified his new role at Kick as a non-owner advisor and non-exclusive broadcaster. He stated that one of the first thing's Kick is doing to differentiate itself from Twitch is to give creators 95% of all revenue from subscriptions and 100% of all revenue from tips (which the platform will refer to as "kicks.") This is a significant improvement over Twitch's 50% and even YouTube, which allows creators to keep 70% of subscriber payments. Trainwreck claims that Kick can afford this much more generous ratio because most of a streaming platform's revenue comes from advertisers and not taxing creators.
In addition to the much lower platform costs, Trainwreck also promises that streamers on Kick will receive payments based on the number of hours viewers spend watching their channel and terms of service that are much fairer to the creator. He also claimed that more updates are still on the way.
It's clear that Kick still has quite a few bugs to iron out. It recently posted on Twitter that it's currently working on a fix for an issue with creators not being able to request a stream key. This isn't all that surprising given that the platform is still in beta, but if Mixer proved anything, it's that building a viewer-base to break into the livestreaming space is no easy feat. Hopefully, Kick is up to the challenge.