It was worth it!

Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 13-05-2022
Online Games Bay

Few years back YouTube, as it is a tradition of that company, screwed over the creators on the platform by changing the rules of monetization and in single move cutting a lot of people from potential income. But at least now we can say it was all worth it!

Few days back a Twitch streamer called Sykkuno announced he is moving to YouTube, because... Twitch made a typo in his name. Of course I oversimplify the story in desperate attempt to make it interesting, because this story on its own is hardly interesting.

Twitch made a typo in his name (or rather pseudonym) and in official offer of new contract he was put as Sukkuno, which made him switch to YouTube, but also there were better contract arrangements with Google platform, so it wasn’t just petty tantrum over typo. I hope.

Why do I even mention Sykkuno? Well, in his "emotional" (as it was described in some articles) announcement he mentioned three times that he is the 24th most earning streamer on Twitch and 48th with the most followers, so Twitch shouldn’t made a typo. It was his way of using the "do you know who I am?" cliche to justify his decision, but this made me interested in the story. I have never heard of Sykkuno, which is hardly surprising since I don’t watch Twitch, so I was wondering why did that typo made it into articles?

As it turned out there was a bit more to that story (but not much) - Sykkuno became popular by playing Among Us, in November 2020 he gained about 54 million views on YouTube and about 7 million on Twitch, which is quite impressive. Or rather was, because since then his popularity had faded drastically - by July 2021 his numbers dropped to 4 million on each platform, which is still good, I wouldn’t mind having such audience, but nowhere near the peak. But since Among Us lost popularity so did Sykkuno, it’s completely understandable, he got audience not through his personality, but by popularity of a game.

Again - why do I mention this? It’s not like there is anything interesting in that story so far, right? Well, actually there is - according to some streamers one of the reasons Sykkuno moved to YouTube in May 2022 is that YouTube offered him an "insane" amount of money (whatever that means) so he would sign an exclusive deal. It sounds like a good news, I mean for him. But, as usual, I was curious how well is he doing on new platform after making the switch and so far, it doesn’t look like he made a huge splash.

It is a very early stage of his adventure on YouTube, but apart from his "emotional" announcement (which gathered 3 million views) his further efforts so far engage less than 25% of his subscribers count and are only slightly better than what he was achieving before going exclusive. And let’s not forget that YouTube must have pushed his channel to increase exposure, since they invested "insane" amount of money in this deal.

Sykkuno is another streamer, who moved from Twitch in recent months, others being f.e. TimTheTatman and CouRage, and both of them are doing slightly worse than before signing deal with YouTube. So, to summarize and finally make a point, few years back YouTube screwed over thousands if not millions of small creators and cut them off from monetizing their videos, but at least it was worth it so YouTube could get the talents of Sykkuno, TimTheTatman, CouRage and others... All of which were already on the platform... And they are doing the same things they were doing before... And they have less audience than they had before...

But I’m sure it was worth it. Since the whole point of this giant waste of money was to score some petty points over Twitch, shouldn’t YouTube just rebrand to CorpoTube? It would be simple and honest way to show the direction this platform is heading...

11-07-2022