Recent TwitchTV Events

Just thought I'd share my feelings on recent events involving Twitch.

-2 hour highlights-
As someone who speedruns RPG games, this is annoying. Most of my games are 3+ hours so I would have to highlight in chunks. It's like we're going back in time to the days of YouTube when videos longer than 10 minutes couldn't be uploaded. I understand most people's response to this, not every game can be beaten in under 2 hours. And a lot of people's response to people complaining about their speedrun being longer than 2 hours is also annoying. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm talking about the "You're speedrunners, just go faster" responses. Outside people don't understand that some games can't go lower than they are or that it's just not that easy. As for people saying that we could just locally record our runs as we stream, not everyone has a good enough computer to stream and record. My computer that I use for streaming can barely handle streaming, thankfully OBS' built in record as you stream feature doesn't require a lot more CPU than as if you were streaming. So I advise you all to look into that, I believe Xsplit also has something like this.

-Content ID matching-
Has Twitch become YouTube? I understand they want to avoid issues with the people who made the original music, matching game music and removing it from a site meant for games is dumb. The point of Twitch is to share your gaming experiences but when your video has no audio just because I played Mega Man, the experience is soured. Not only does the game audio go, but ALL the audio goes. Meaning if I did a speedrun of a 3+ hour game, not only do I have to make highlights in chunks, I also have to worry about my commentary that may or may not be there anymore since Twitch is using an automatic matching system instead of working off a request, human to human basis. Sure it would be slower, but stuff like game audio wouldn't get unnecessarily removed. Not to mention not even the people who made the music aren't safe. Valve's own streams of their own games have their audio removed, like really? Come on Twitch, seriously. I know it's 2014 but I'd much rather talk to a human than a computer, having this automatic system is dumb, just dumb.

-Twitch AMA-
I haven't actually gone to the Reddit post myself, however I've sat on Twitter and read the "highlights" of the AMA. First off, as someone who once represented a company, it's a shame that the man Twitch put up to deal with everyone didn't stay professional under all the fire he was getting. At no point are you allowed to freak out and do something to make your company look bad. Telling someone to "stop beating your wife" was VERY unprofessional and I hope Twitch has some way to handle this man's outrageous responses to people who, by the way could be nicer too, just want answers to their questions. Not to mention he's clearly dodging questions that we would all like the answers to. He's also tip-toeing around, saying stuff without giving us a real answer, does he know this is an AMA? As for his real responses, I hope they look into fixing their automatic content ID matching system and maybe remove it and replace it with a more traditional human to human basis. This way, someone could get a job over at Twitch and get paid for this.

-Switching to Hitbox-
Will I do it? Probably not. I'm not exactly ~popular~ on Twitch but I do have 400+ followers that I know are on Twitch, will use Twitch, and only know how to contact me on Twitch. Say what you want but I would much rather stay where I know people would see me, and I'm not alone in thinking this. This isn't the first time I've stated that I have no plans to move, remember the whole "Remove Horror" stuff. I believe that Twitch will fix whatever issues we have. They seem to have interest in fixing some stuff, I just hope they stick to their guns. As for Hitbox, I like their site, their support is very good but their site isn't built for handling all of us moving there. I did a stream yesterday and my stream crashed 3 times due to their streaming servers crashing from everyone streaming at once. Not to mention I couldn't even use my own chat since I couldn't click on the chat box to type anything. Though Twitch isn't the only streaming website, it certainly is the only one so far built to handle the masses.

In short, I hope things get fixed. I will just sit on the back-burner and resume doing my own stuff, streaming to Twitch, doing runs, whatever. Call me an optimist but I really believe Twitch will fix their problems (at least the highlight and audio stuff). Things like the delay have gotten better than it originally was so they clearly know what needs to get fixed when they implement stuff. As for the future, I hope they find someone who can keep his or her cool when being addressed by angry users. Those were users of your site, you shouldn't lash out at them, it's what fuels their hatred towards not only you, but the company you're here to represent.

~Silver