The story this time around: Google/YouTube reportedly want Twitch.tv, the increasingly/explosively popular service meant to let gamers watch others play games, live. The purported price tag? 1 billion.
According to Variety, it’s already a done deal, and they say the official announcement is looming.
The WSJ, meanwhile, says the talks are very early on – too early for a price to be set, even.
While the concept behind Twitch might seem crazy (I can’t even count the number of people I’ve heard ask “Why would you want to watch someone else play video games?”), the service has done nothing but rocket in popularity since launching back in 2011.
Turns out, people like to watch other people play games. With competitive games, like League of Legends, gamers watch to learn; with other, more casual games, like Minecraft, they watch just to be entertained.
Twitch.tv is actually something of an oddity, in that it’s an independent spin-off of another company.
A few years after launching Justin.tv (another video livestreaming service, meant primarily to stream live video from your webcam) its founders noticed that the site’s gaming channels always managed to pull in particularly massive numbers. In 2011, they spun the site’s Gaming section into a site of its own — Twitch.tv. By 2014, Twitch had grown so huge that the parent company was rebranded as Twitch Interactive.
For those keeping track: Twitch has raised roughly $35M since becoming an independent company.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
