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I think that would decimate their user numbers, which is a bad deal for the streamers too since they make money on sponsorships/ads and based on audience size. Hard to grow an audience when folks have to pay for the service. No idea how much of an average size streamer's income is based on donations on stream compared to brand deals. I wouldn't expect the average user to both pay for a sub to twitch, and also donate to the streamers.

I won't pretend to know what Twitch knows, but watching for free is definitely integral to how Twitch acquires users.



Doesn’t shutting off the service decimate their numbers more?


That's not obvious. If the pay-to-watch version of Twitch isn't viable, it will have no streamers and no users, but it will cost more than the we-no-longer-exist version.


A fixed price tier cannot cover the full cost of that user's variable stream usage.

Twitch is unable to charge per hr streamed - nobody would accept that pricing, esp. if it was originally free.

Removing twitch from korea is the best move, since koreans are the ones losing out - which hopefully as a democracy, they elect someone to change this sort of lobbying from the ISP industry.




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