marcus_fletcher

This article is about twitch and its streamers. And the risks you take being a streamer.

Live streaming

What is livestreaming?

Livestreaming is where a guy or a girl shows themselves live. They could be playing games, walking around in the city or just anything really. The difference between live streaming and making videos on youtube is that everything is raw and you can't edit it. So you have to be careful about what you say. Livestreams is happening all around the world and on a lot of platforms such as Twitch, YouTube, Facebook Live and Periscope. And every day more than 50000 people livestream

The risks you take being a livestreamer.

One of the biggest risks u take with being a livestreamer is being swatted. Viewers watching the livestream will think that it’s funny to “Swat” someone while they’re live on stream so they will get a reaction.

Another risk u take is that its non-editable which means that everything u do is seen by hundreds of people. So for example if you are really drunk and you don’t think about what you’re saying you might accidentally say some racial slurs which will get you in a lot of trouble.

The last big risk is hate. No matter what you are doing or how popular you are, people will hate. And you will get a lot of messages with people offending you. This had lead to

a lot of streamers quitting because they couldn’t handle all of the pressure and hate that they would get everytime they were live streaming. And the messages will be from racist slurs to making fun about looks and size. Because no one knows who the viewers is and they have no consequences when typing all of this so they would keep going to the limit.

How much do streamers earn?

Everyday is a different day with income for all streamers. The main source of income is their donations that they receive, the subscribers and also adds /  commercials. The donations that the streamers receive range from $1 to an unlimited amount. The reason people donate is if they want to ask the streamer a question directly or they just want to support him / her. Subscribers, it costs $5 for each viewer to subscribe to the livestreamer for 1 month. The streamer will receive half of that money. Where the rest of the money goes to Twitch.The biggest streamer on Twitch right now has around 200.000 Subscribers which means he gets $500.000 every month not including donations and adds.

The biggest streamers

The biggest streamers right now are Ninja, IcePoseidon, Summit1g, Shroud and Tyler1.

Out all all these streamers Ninja is the biggest. He usually gets 130.000 Viewers everytime he streams and he is known for playing the popular game “Fortnite”

The four other streamers get around 30.000 viewers each stream which is still some of the biggest numbers streamers get. Ninja really took everyone with storm and in February he beat the record for the most followers on Twitch which was 3 Million, he now has 7 Million followers just 3 months later and the next one in the line has 3.2 Million. With Donations, adds and subscriptions Ninja earns more than 1 Million dollars every month which is outrageous.

IcePoseidon does livestreams where he walks around his city and he experience some crazy stuff. He witnessed a suicide, he was swatted, he was told by a mafia to leave a restaurant and he almost got shot by some gangsters. IcePoseidon really sets his life on the line when streaming and everyday is different for him.

“Swatting”

The term “Swatting” is when someone calls in a fake emergency and a swat team is sent out to the location where they take it as a real situation and go in as if the emergency is real. This has lead to dead 1 time, but it was a livestreamer. In this case, Andrew Finch, whose family members say did not play video games and was a father of two young boys, answered his door only to face down a swat team response. Allegedly, one officer immediately fired upon Finch, who later died at a hospital. It’s unclear why Finch, who is said not to have had a weapon on him, was fired upon. This swat call happened from a Call of Duty match between to team where they wagered $1.5 and got in an argument which then lead to the fake emergency being called upon a fake address someone gave.

The same exact thing can happen on someone whilst they’re livestreaming. Viewers will sit and watch the livestream for a while to find out where the streamer lives. He will then call in a swat team for “fun” and to see the reaction of the streamer. A lot of people that calls in a fake swat definitely doesn’t know the consequences which is up to 5 years in prison. Swatting happens a lot of times mostly to popular streamers.

Pros with being a streamer

You can do it anytime you want. Ofcourse if you get big people will start to care if you take a lot of breaks but you can set your own schedule and take breaks whenever you need them.

You can choose what u want to do yourself if you are maybe used to play a specific game, you can switch it up and play something else. You might lose some viewers but you will also gain some by switching it up.

You will establish a great community, of course this is not bound to happen, but if u get big on Twitch you will automatically establish a community.

You can interact with viewers, whilst watching they can comment in your chat and you can respond to them, there’s a 5 second delay but that doesn't really matter.

Cons with being a streamer

Trolls, a lot of trolls everywhere on twitch people will join your channel and troll just for fun

Harassment, trolls might go further and start to harass you and make it personal.

Swatting, which can get very serious.

Its direct and live and you can’t edit out fails or whatever might happen

If you do something horrible or say something bad, people might stop watching your stream and from one day being able to earn enough money to pay the rent, the next day u might not be able to afford that.