Twitch Made a Big Boo Boo...
Admittedly my my last post about Twitch I sort of jumped the gun assuming that Twitch was bought by Google. There was no official announcement regarding it (Though apparently the sources are credible). However, whether or not they were bought by Google doesn't matter because they are pulling a Google right now.
They have implemented a content ID-like system that detects past broadcasts and highlights for supposedly infringing material. (Even stuff in the public domain) Believe it or not, despite it being a platform for gaming, it's also hitting game stuff, causing thousands of videos to get deleted or muted. It's like saying: Yes, this is a website for gaming, yet you can't broadcast video games on it ever.
On top of that, they will be deleting past broadcasts (source in the second link above) unless you save them as highlights. As a kicker to this, highlights will be limited to two hours each. So this not only forces people to go back through ALL of their videos to get them saved, they also will likely have to do it many times over per video since a lot of people stream for hours at a time. Will people who have a lot of videos have enough time to do it before they are deleted? Chances are no.
Their recommended solution? Export your broadcasts to your Youtube channel... Yeah, they just told people to use another service. I decided to give that a try with the first Twitch test broadcast I did and it got hit with Youtube's Content ID instantly upon upload and it was a little over a minute of Super Mario World footage. So that may very well not be an option for many people due to the fact that if you get 3 strikes from companies doing takedowns on Content ID matches, you'll lose your Twitch videos anyway because your Youtube account will not exist anymore.
So needless to say that Google buyout or not, Twitch is now in shambles.
You might be thinking: "Oh don't worry, we'll just go back to streaming on Justin.TV like we did before Twitch was spun off of it". WRONG! Justin.TV closed just two days ago (on the 5th) so they could focus on Twitch. Not only that, but they openly admitted that you lost your entire following on JTV as a result of the site closure.
So unfortunately it looks like a lot of people will be trying to pick up the pieces and/or moving somewhere else. Not good overall...
