amazon gaming – The Gaming News Corner

When Amazon purchased Twitch in 2014, they aimed to provide features for their Prime members. When your Amazon Prime account connects with your Twitch account, you can download free content for PC games, games themselves, and the ability to subscribe to one Twitch streamer for free for one month.

When will I see ads again?

Starting September 14th, any new Twitch Prime members will start receiving ads. If you have a monthly plan for Amazon Prime, then ads will show on October 15th. If you’re an annual user, ads will appear after your renewal period. Nothing else is changing with the Prime plan. You will still receive a free subscription each month and free games and content.

Why enable ads?

Similar to the YouTube platform, having ads on streams help support the streamer. While Prime membership gives you a free subscription, it mostly supports Amazon, not the Twitch streamer itself. The free subscription still gives the streamers $5 but ads help streamers earn more. According to CNBC, some streamers can earn averages about $250 per 100 subscribers due to ads. Twitch prides itself on supporting its community and most streamers weren’t earning much from Prime viewers unless they used their free subscriptions.

Are you disappointed to have ads with Twitch Prime?

Sources

Twitch

CNBC

Discord, the popular chat, video, and communications app, will begin offering video games with their Nitro services. Nitro is a subscription platform for $4.99/month that offers users more abilities for chat such as gif uploads and custom tags. The price will still be $4.99 per month or $49.99 a year but will soon involve video games! Discord Nitro will have its own library of games available to stream or purchase. The beta will launch to 50,000 Canadians soon but expects to go to more regions at a later date.

How do they compete?

This is direct competition against Steam and Twitch. Twitch is becoming a PC game streaming service and has monthly free games. Discord is trying to differentiate itself by connecting it with their chat platform and community. Discord has always been greatly enjoyed by users because easy to set up and its developers are gamers too. They interact with fans and have a better social media presence than Steam or Twitch. Games are catered to you based on your interest but Discord employees can leave small recommendations about the game.

While they can’t compete with Steam’s library, Discord will have partnerships with THQ and Deep Silver. Having Nitro will also give you access to games without paying such as Saints Row: The Third, Darksiders: Warmastered Edition, Super Meat Boy and Metro: Last Light Redux. You can buy games at their online stores.

They will start their own exclusives called “First on Discord.” They will be indie games that “pushes the boundary of creative game design and is important to innovation and the long-term health of the industry.” They will also have games from Blizzard (World of Warcraft, Overwatch) and Epic (Fortnite). The split between Discord and game is 30 – 70 which is similar to all platforms.

They won’t have every game out but if you’re looking to have a smaller library, perhaps this is an option for you! Steam is very cluttered in comparison but is widely used by all PC gamers. Whether Nitro can compete with them or Twitch will be interesting as game streaming becomes more popular.

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Tag: amazon gaming

Twitch Prime Users will receive Ads