Viper also switching to FB gaming

[lecracheursagacite]

On Age of Empires still being and always going to be a niche game with a small community that just received an extremely fortunate short term boom, because multiple things acting together at the perfect time, and that once the hype did fade away there is nothing else we can do about it, but accept that we indeed are a niche community that cant hope for this hype to continue forever? Not much one can do about it.

What are those "multiple things" exactly?

 

[Marvino]

Anyone who says they wouldn't do the same thing if given the same chance and opportunity as Viper / T90 is deluded and lying to themselves.

Good luck to them. They should milk it whilst they can, and I hope Memb / Nili / all other regular streamers get approached and given a glorious offer too.

 

[SPICEQUEENOFSWAZILAND]

People are rightly upset here, on youtube, reddit etc because they still bought into concepts of community, loyalty to one another and so forth. To see these relationships continuously sidelined for money is upsetting. You can belittle them for being naive in the first place, but disillusionment is still a painful process.
It is the streamers choice and their decision is understandable, but don't expect all their followers to have the same level of respect or interest in their content anymore. If the opposite happened, and a prominent community member turned down such an offer I think most of us would have quite a lot of respect and pride in them for that. Anyway, what matters and is interesting is the ramifications this will have on the future of the game, not a few individuals going from 6 to 7 figure salaries.

 

[Sigismund]

Anyone who says they wouldn't do the same thing if given the same chance and opportunity as Viper / T90 is deluded and lying to themselves.

Good luck to them. They should milk it whilst they can, and I hope Memb / Nili / all other regular streamers get approached and given a glorious offer too.

This is a silly comment since it's factually incorrect. They are throwing money at a lot of streamers and many of them have rejected.

For example, PENTA is similar size twitch streamer as T90 was and he rejected 5 million / 2 year contract offer from fb gaming.

 

[Paint]

I understand the appeal of having less viewers following a chat with 5000+ people is way too much work and this is one way of getting rid of most of them.

For me it doesn't really matter there are more than enough high level games streamed on twitch.

 

[TheViper]

For the people bringing up Mixer and using that as if it was a greedy move, that was never about money. Sure, while it was nice to have a little guaranteed income, I would very likely have made quite a bit more on Twitch.

Mixer came at a time where my motivation was low and I needed a new challenge. Combined with a lot of promises I was made regarding AoE, that would have meant a lot of publicity and growth for my brand as well as benefiting the AOE competitive scene and community, made the opportunity really exciting. It was a disappointing situation in the end, in regards to those promises not being held, but I learned a lot from that and don't regret the move.

The Facebook situation is obviously different.

 

[Paint]

Anyone who says they wouldn't do the same thing if given the same chance and opportunity as Viper / T90 is deluded and lying to themselves.

Good luck to them. They should milk it whilst they can, and I hope Memb / Nili / all other regular streamers get approached and given a glorious offer too.

You think people care more about money then they actually do, probably because you would do it yourself and assume everyone is like you but there are many people that would not do this and instead just keep streaming at the place it's most convenient for their viewers to watch.

 

[aoeplayer]

People are rightly upset here, on youtube, reddit etc because they still bought into concepts of community, loyalty to one another and so forth. To see these relationships continuously sidelined for money is upsetting. You can belittle them for being naive in the first place, but disillusionment is still a painful process.
It is the streamers choice and their decision is understandable, but don't expect all their followers to have the same level of respect or interest in their content anymore. If the opposite happened, and a prominent community member turned down such an offer I think most of us would have quite a lot of respect and pride in them for that. Anyway, what matters and is interesting is the ramifications this will have on the future of the game, not a few individuals going from 6 to 7 figure salaries.

Didn't Hera turn down FB maybe a year ago? And Viper at the time called him crazy.

 

[Marvino]

You think people care more about money then they actually do, probably because you would do it yourself and assume everyone is like you but there are many people that would not do this and instead just keep streaming at the place it's most convenient for their viewers to watch.

If the option to change my life through monetary gains was there, I 500000% would do it. If you wouldn’t, good for you, enjoy the moral high ground! As long as there’s no “shoulda coulda woulda” in hindsight, it’s all Gucci!

 

[Hunyadi_]

I get why people are worried about the community. But I don’t get why some people act as if streaming is a community service, not a personal business.

It's called customer service. You treat your customers well and do a good job or sell a quality product, you earn their loyalty. And customer loyalty can go a long way towards ensuring a lengthy career in this.

 

[Hunyadi_]

I guess it should definitely be more. If this wasn't the case, Viper wouldn't be moving to FB after knowing what happened when he moved to Mixer.

I can't blame Viper either, what he said is actually true, it is such a volatile career and he said he doesn't know how long it is gonna last, so it's wise to make more money because at last money is gonna save him once his streaming career ends.

FIRE - Financial Independence Retire Early is real. There is no loyalty in this world.

How is this career volatile? It's been anything but. It's been around for at least 10 years now (streaming as a career) and it's only growing in popularity every day. Gaming numbers are increasing, streaming numbers are increasing, even AoE2 viewers and gamer #'ers are steadily increasing. There has been no volatility at all. If anything the move to mixxer caused the biggest volatility we've ever seen and everyone survived that.

This is utter nonsense. He should just admit he wants the money and stop trying to appear like a victim, these are manipulative tactics.

 

[Snizl]

What are those "multiple things" exactly?

I would say primarily the release of the Definitive Edition in conjunction with the global Lockdown were a major catalyst for the game. Lots more people on twitch, both watching and streaming and the fortunate event that there WAS a player that was easily to be identified as THE best so far, which makes it easy for new people to identify with a person, but at the same time this player losing the throne shortly after making for an interesting competetive scene.

 

[Paint]

If the option to change my life through monetary gains was there, I 500000% would do it. If you wouldn’t, good for you, enjoy the moral high ground! As long as there’s no “shoulda coulda woulda” in hindsight, it’s all Gucci!

It's not like the improvement in quantity of life is very big if you go from 100'000$ to 150'000$ a year.

 

[vince]

some people taking this wayyyyyyy too personally lol

congrats viper !

 

[Tarsiz]

This is utter nonsense. He should just admit he wants the money and stop trying to appear like a victim, these are manipulative tactics

Nobody is trying to appear like a victim and both have been very clear that the money offered by FB was by far the #1 factor driving their decision to change. You may be upset about the whole FB situation but don't be disingenuous.

Also, yes streaming is absolutely volatile, especially in the case of a game where the scene has been very much fed by an external source of money (Microsoft) for the past 2 years. Sure, both T90 and Viper were able to make a living on Twitch before that heavy investment, but even back then we had regular expansions keeping the game alive and the promise of DE being released.

It is entirely possible that if Microsoft dropped AoE 2 completely and no further expansion or anything was released, the scene would still survive, however:
- It would probably mean less people can live off streaming and playing AoE 2
- How long would a stale game remain attractive for someone to play and stream every week? Streamer's motivation is absolutely key to foster an audience and play the long game

 

[Zeev]

This is utter nonsense. He should just admit he wants the money and stop trying to appear like a victim, these are manipulative tactics.

But he did.

People should really get it through that this is a job for streamers. Anyone can think what they would do if some other company would offer them a better deal to come work for the other company. I've been in that position and I would've left my current employer, but they counter offered with an even better deal.

 

[Giuseppe551]

with AoE4 around the corner he can't even be sure that AoE 2 is still going to be a thing in the near future

If anything, the downfall of AoE2 will mainly because of Microsoft withdrawing resources.

Again, if only we had an official AoE Tournament Coordinator who could shed some light here. I mean what is the point of having someone in that position if the entire competitive scene is shrouded in mystery beyond next month?

 

[TheWiseStonedPanda]

I love nili, but communication has never been his biggest strength - and it’s not something we can expect from him. There’s a need for that job in the aoe world though, so many misunderstandings and weird communications lately.

 

Again, if only we had an official AoE Tournament Coordinator who could shed some light here. I mean what is the point of having someone in that position if the entire competitive scene is shrouded in mystery beyond next month?

Why so negative instead of telling your expectations or saying what you would need to feel better?

 

[HongeyKong]

It's not like the improvement in quantity of life is very big if you go from 100'000$ to 150'000$ a year.

It is if the latter is guaranteed unlike the former.

 

[shm0wt]

Yeah I gotta say, maybe T90 makes a big deal about how much "the community" means to him etc. but Viper has always been pretty up front that for him streaming is a job. If I got offered a job where I did the same thing for more money than my current job, obviously I'm going to take that job, even if some people on the internet will be upset with me for it. So good luck to him and T90, I hope they can make it work on fb.

I think in the grand scheme of things AoE2 will do just fine: even if funding dries up for a bit, if people are still playing and watching then there'll still be sponsors and tournaments down the road, and the game is big enough at this point that even if half the playerbase left to play AoE4 and never came back it'd still be pretty popular.

I do think this is pretty bad for AoE4 though. Microsoft were presumably hoping the game would get a big push from popular streamers like T90 and Viper playing on Twitch. I think it's certainly possible both of them could build up an audience over time, if the platform isn't total dogshit (I have never watched it). After all they are both very hard workers who've done this before. But that stuff takes time. AoE4 comes out like next week. It'll be streaming day 1 to a comparatively small audience of hardcore T90 and Viper fans who care about those streamers enough to make the switch immediately, plus a few fb moms I guess - and whoever's watching the streamers who are left on Twitch.

We'll see but this kinda makes me wonder if Viper, T90 already have quite low expectations for the AoE4 launch anyway, and are looking for guaranteed income during the next few months when it's going to be dominating most AoE streaming. But maybe that's a bit too much of a conspiracy theory, it certainly doesn't have to be the case for hardworking streamers to want a pay rise.

Maybe this will also create space for some of the smaller players streaming AoE on Twitch to grow their audiences. That would be nice, as I feel like the standard roster of AoE2 casters is a bit stale atm. Could be good to get some fresh blood.

 

It's not like the improvement in quantity of life is very big if you go from 100'000$ to 150'000$ a year.

Don't forget that Twitch with regional sub pricing also may have influenced the decision. Some streamers probably made less money overall, probably up to 30% even.

 

[Giuseppe551]

@simonsan Ok, here goes. @Nili_AoE It would be amazing if you took 2 minutes out of your day to speak to the future of AoE2 tournaments in 2022 (and beyond). As you can see, there is a great deal of uncertainty here and elsewhere about the state of the game moving forward, with many believing that most resources will go to AoE4 instead of AoE2. Could you please clear that up for us? Thanks in advance.

 

[SuperskinnyBLS]

Viper switching to FB so that less people will troll him after utd today's game xD

 

[Leonidas91]

Two large streamers enough to severely hurt an entire community. By changing platforms. And we as a community have nothing to reflect on.

What should the community reflect on? That T90 and Viper followed the route of money? :D Come on