Gaming Live launches its game livestreaming beta as a Twitch alternative
Gaming Live has launched the beta test of its game livestreaming platform as an alternative to Amazon’s Twitch.
The Warsaw, Poland-based Gaming Live, which is part of the Seedcamp business accelerator, has announced it is going to launch a beta version of its platform “to battle Twitch” on Feb. 1. That won’t be an easy competition, as Twitch has pioneered livestreaming for e-sports and other gaming endeavors over the last few years. At last count, Twitch had 100 million monthly visitors. But Gaming Live is out to show that livestreaming can support more than one big company. Twitch grew so fast that it drew the attention of Amazon, which acquired the video service for $970 million last summer.
The redesigned Gaming Live platform offers features to gamers looking for a source of entertainment, news, and information. It allows players and other partners to monetize their gaming-based activities. Additionally, Gaming Live claims that it has achieved transcoding efficiency over the competition, which means that it can produce high-quality video more inexpensively than rivals. The Polish company said it is providing users with free transcoding (high-definition and standard-definition quality) and accepts live-streams in 2K quality with no bitrate and framerate limitations.
The firm also plans to release mobile apps for Android and iOS devices in the next couple of weeks and expects to be on smart TVs, consoles, and DVB-T decoders in central Europe in a couple of days. As such, it appears to be trying to carve out the European audience for game livestreaming.
In January, after Gaming Live disclosed its plans, a spokesman for Twitch said, “It is always validating for the appeal of live video when new companies enter the space.”
Gaming Live said it has partnerships with the biggest media groups and owners of satellite and cable TV in order to allow its content creators to get to the broader audiences. Besides Twitch, other rivals include Hitbox. Over the past six months, Gaming Live said its site has been visited 9 million times. Until now, the company had just six employees, but it plans to hire another 15 in the first quarter.
“We are introducing a completely redesigned experience for both content creators and the audience,” said Gaming Live chief operating officer Krystian Berg, in a statement. “What we have released today is still only a small part of what we are going to introduce in the coming months to revolutionize the experience of interaction between gamers. We never wanted to be just another boring video platform, and we won’t disappoint. We’re on it.”
For those who are already established in game livestreaming, Gaming Live has offered a $4 (cost per 1,000 views) CPM and 60 percent of gross revenues from the subscriptions. The company also plans to introduce other monetization features, such as games reselling (revenue-share model) through non-invasive in-player advertisements.
Gaming Live said that the revenue model will be fair for all users — whether they are an existing entity in the market, a content producer, or a sole enthusiast.
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