It was foretold in the ancient scripts of Twitter that Microsoft’s venture into streaming, known as Mixer, would come to an end.
Today is the fateful day where many streamers and viewers find themselves upended and looking for a new home in a tumultuous time where the primary streaming service, Twitch, is plagued by disgusting allegations that appear to promise success if you’re willing to take some lewd photos for the staff.
Yet Mixer has opted to begin encouraging their users to go experience Facebook Gaming, which is an absolutely bizarre juxtaposition between the elderly that use Facebook, and the young that tend to prefer watching streamers.
To say that the demographic isn’t exactly being measured in this move by Facebook to capture and disperse some streamers away from Twitch would be an understatement.
To further venture that Facebook Gaming has an interesting viewer base that may not accurately capture the more hardcore stream viewers seems to be accurate as it stands during the time of the move.
Not that there’s anything wrong with mobile gaming, but it’s a far cry from what Twitch and Mixer themselves found their streamers playing to the delight of fans; the question of precisely how well Facebook Gaming will take to the journey that is clearly ahead of them has yet to be seen.
Facebook has recently allegedly struggled to maintain a level of integrity within the United States during this time of political upheaval (to frame it pleasantly), consistently taking knocks while the current federal administration uses them to further their political messages while Twitter consistently strikes them down.
Yet there are very deep pockets over at Facebook, and they aren’t drying up anytime soon; if Facebook can weather the initial storm and place a premium on high-quality streaming content while simultaneously avoiding any of the overtly large egos and backroom politicking that many are stating Twitch has, fb.gg could turn into something special.
It would take, however, a conscious effort: Twitch became massive by backing a radical number of tournaments that they exclusively hosted, bringing Counter-Strike and League of Legends gameplay back into the mainstream while continuing to offer a platform for the personalities that compete to put the literal bread on the table through advertisements and sponsorship.
If Facebook take a few pages from Twitch’s handbook, while undergoing massive security and privacy reforms that can make the more tech-savvy demographic comfortable enough to exist there, Twitch might have a concern in a couple of years. Emphasis on the word ‘might’.
