Kick was the ghost that haunted TwitchCon

TwitchCon has been a bit of a downer this year. Missing leaders Megan Thee Stallion, Travis Scott, and Kim Stones. Instead, we went towards DJs and smaller artists in an immersive venue that included a roller coaster ride and an escape room inside the grocery store for the show.

The shadow that loomed over this weekend’s TwitchCon, though, was the number of other events that were taking place in Las Vegas at the same time, including the We Are Youth music festival and an offline presence from rival creator platform Kick.

Although the creators of the content flocked to Vegas for the platform of Amazon, which presented halls and received sound systems, it kicked off its appearance in the near future of the casino, where the gambling games and the final fight of the championship live by screening sponsored. Nickmercs and other streamers were present. The space is also sponsored by the sequel Metas and Clan FaZe.

He promises to kick the streamers they can keep 95% of their income by giving up just 5% in fees. Last week, Kickstarter signed Twitch streamer Nick “Nickmercs” Kolcheff to a nonexclusive one-year deal at Closed Signs. Forbes reported that Kolcheff was offered $10 million. This is just the latest in a series of deals involving major streamers, which include Twitch’s most popular female streamer, Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa, and former Overwatch For gamer Felix Lengyel “xQc”, who has almost 12 million followers on Twitch and $100 million with Kick. The magnitudes of these deals and the signature names have drawn a lot of attention to the new platform.

“Money talks and while renters are seeing some kind of return on Kick, they continue to be seen as a viable competitor,” said Alyssa Sweetman, community advisor at creator platform LiveSpace and former Twitch employee. “Kick” wants to be seen as a restless and platform of the people.

Recent tweaks can make it even easier to kick in. On Friday, it was announced in his remarkable speech that he would suffer streams to spread to several platforms at the same time. The new rules allow streamers to broadcast or stream simultaneously to YouTube and Kick, for example, which will help creators who sign nonexclusively with Kick. VELLES said they made this new change after hearing community feedback.

“Velle is not bloody talented,” Velle told Polygon on Sunday evening. “Streamers who sign Kick deals are signing non-exclusive contracts and are actually onsite at TwitchCon. If you look at the TwitchCon schedule, many of the names you see signing are the same ones performing on the main stage. Signing with kick doesn’t mean you won’t sign with Twitch. ”

Kick’s presence at Twitchcon was such a fantasy. He spoke, but the representatives of Las Vegas did not grant interviews.

These businesses could give deja vu from 2019 and 2020, with platforms like Facebook and Microsoft’s Mixer has signed a multimillion dollar exclusive deal with creators challenging the livestreaming dominance of YouTube and Twitch. But talent agents say the lack of exclusivity puts these last standards in different categories.

“Kick has the best shot of all (the new record) to have some long-term impact,” said Vinny Fiacco, director of talent management at Evolved Talent, which helped broker Lengyel’s $100 million deal with Kick. “Mixer was throwing a lot of money around. Facebook is always throwing a lot of money. ‘Big’, ‘big’, that is, we saw a big bag. If you want to give up, take that bag, but it is the death of your life.

Fiacco said Kick has listened to creators and is actively improving its platform based on feedback. He said that the 95-5 tax split platform doesn’t leave much flexibility in the future, so he could face a backlash if he ever changes to charging higher fees to split creators.

“I think he’s painted himself into a corner a little bit,” Fiacco said. “If they can pull it off, that’s amazing. But I think if you’re the head of this platform, you can’t go, ‘Oh, we just realized we’re not making the money we need to make 90-10.’ So in that sense, I really hope that it works.

“We believe that we and Kick and our competitors can achieve a profit of 95-5,” said Bijan Tehrani, Kick co-founder. “People grossly underestimate what percentage of revenue for streaming services results in under the split.”

By interacting with Lengyel, the streamer has certain quotas to hit. The contract pays $100 million over two years, and about $30 million is incentive and performance-based.

Multiple streams told Polygon that the kick, in its current form, does not appear to be a sign of a court appeal. They cited various reasons, including that one of the platform’s investors is the co-founder of the crypto gambling website Stake, which kicks off a poorly moderated live chat, and some of the streamers attached to the platform have a reputation for attracting controversy.

“Kick is the wild west, which is fine for some people, because maybe they’re doing the kind of content they want to do, and that’s fine,” Ryann Weller said on Saturday’s Vellicare streamer. “But for me, I want to make it a safe place for my community. I want to create a place where people can call home, essentially, when it comes to hospitality. It is a kind of safe local bar. The kick, man, has no provisions that give me the security to experience at all. Again, money may not be the end all be all of moving platforms.

“We have to understand that some creators must see that the platform has reached a certain level of maturity before they want to make the leap for the sake of the fans, but also for the mental benefit of Esse,” says Sebastien Delvaux, co-founder and chief operating officer of Evolved. “So I understand that different creators have different comfort levels with that and kicking to get ahead of it.”

Nineteen-year-old Minecraft streamer Toby “Tubbo” Smith was blunt. “I’d rather be killed than kicked,” Polygon said on Sunday. “It’s a platform for hate and speech.”

“We see a very different trend happening in the behavior of creators towards Kick after recent improvements to our moderation tools and a detailed revamp of our community guidelines,” Tehrani, co-founder of Kick, said. “The SLIP creators (made their) way to kick because of this. It’s still our new religion. We won’t always take what’s right, but we’ll always listen to our community and keep it better month after month.”