You might recall reports not too long ago stating Google was close to acquiring online video game streaming service Twitch, which has approximately 55 million users a month, for a whopping $1 billion. Well as it turns out, Twitch has officially announced that Amazon not Google has acquired it for an approximate $ 970 million.
In an online post on Twitch’s official blog, CEO Emmet Shear said “We chose Amazon because they believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision, and they want to help us get there faster. We’re keeping almost everything the same: our office, our employees, our brand, and most importantly our independence.
But with Amazon’s support we’ll have the resources to bring you an even better Twitch.” This deal might actually be better for users with Google’s rumours receiving a largely negative reaction with fears that strict copyright infringement rules from YouTube might make their way to Twitch should the deal go through. Amazon on the other hand might not be so bad, we can expect a direct integration with Amazon listing and advertisments among other improvements to Twitch’s infrastructure without forced Google integration.
Twitch recently introduced new copyright protection measures hinting towards an impending announcement of a takeover which as it turns out has just happened. Twitch has started flagging stored and archived broadcasts which feature copyright music content, however there have been a massive number of false positives which has the community up in arms.
While any new feature like this is expected to have teething issues, users should understand this at the end of the day is to protect both them and Twitch from lawsuits. Twitch has come out and said their rollout of the feature wasn’t ideal and are working on streamlining it and introducing an appeal process for wronged users. Hopefully with Amazon’s deep pockets Twitch might just make it through this massive growth in viewership when it looked almost certain that they would buckle under pressure had they stayed independent.
