Yandere Simulator - A Warning To All Game Developers

Network effects are just momentum, they can be overcome by a competitor simply by offering even a marginally better service

I couldn't agree more. The reason Twitch is king is because a lot of the competitors are not offering a better service. Hitbox does not offer a better service, they offer an alternative service. If it was better for streamers and better for audiences both would move.

this is a bit of an obscure example, but it reminds me of a time when CS:GO was starting to get big on twitch a few years ago. A controversial yet popular (because the metrics are driven by teenagers, mostly) streamer named m0e decided to sell out and move his stream over to mlg.tv

you can guess how long that lasted.

he was (arrogantly, IMO) convinced that he was the reason people were watching, so convinced that he thought his fans would put up with a inferior streaming service just to watch his streams.

when he left twitch, the majority of viewers stayed behind and watched something else instead.

now, MLG and m0e are both at fault here. m0e for being an arrogant sellout, and MLG for thinking they could just buy traffic with exclusivity deals while putting nothing back into the infrastructure of the streaming service they want so badly to compete with twitch.

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