Tags
youtube Twitch streaming google Facebook

Youtube Buys Twitch

Over the past year, Twitch has transformed from a niche video game streaming community to a huge platform that hosts hundred's of thousands of viewers worldwide. Twitch now takes up a huge portion of the world’s internet traffic, and it's certainly turned a few heads.

Some of those heads are the owners of big internet companies like Facebook and Google, and these companies are renowned for spending big on other businesses to buy out their own competition.

It was inevitable really, but rumors suggest that YouTube is planning to acquire Twitch for a massive $1 billion, all in cash. For the small home-grown Twitch team, this is an offer that's going to be hard to turn down, so it's very likely that the internet's favorite video game streaming service will soon be handed over to YouTube.

For a lot of gamers, this news comes as quite a shock - Youtube is already renowned for being incredibly strict on the content video game broadcasters can submit to their channels, and if these same rules move over to Twitch, it could potentially put a lot of streamers out of business, or certainly make their streaming lives a little bit harder.

YouTube's acquisition of Twitch could also be bad for the average viewer, too. If YouTube decide to integrate their Google+ account system into Twitch, then the overall chat experience could be watered down a little.

What are your thoughts on this? Would you be happy to see YouTube acquire Twitch, or would you prefer it if Twitch refused the $1 billion offer?