Kick: the Twitch competition that focuses on the dark side of the Internet

During the pandemic, we experienced the explosion of streaming . Lockdown has turned us towards digital entertainment and suddenly Tic and their personalities became companions an audience looking to be entertained , build community and entertain with personalities ready to spend hours sitting in front of a camera playing video games, watching series, films or simply talking.

But it took a long time to get there. It was in 2011 when TwitchTV appears after its founders, the JustinTV company, realized that the gamer niche was very interested in the gaming market. streaming. Three years later, Twitch would be bought by Amazon and today the site has more than 200 million users and 7 million content creators, with events like Ibai’s “La Velada” exceeding 3 million visits.

But this leadership in the industry, especially since Amazon took the reins, has not been without problems. Users, both those watching and those streaming They complain about the large number of advertisements that interrupt the transmissions of free users who must pay a subscription to be able to delete them. Additionally, the profit split between the platform and content generators has narrowed over time and is lower than what competitors like YouTube or Facebook offer.

And what’s more, constantly Twitch has had problems moderating its content by banning users without them knowing the reasons and protecting its big figures who, although they violate the guidelines of its conditions of use, are not punished for it.

As if it were a direct answer to these questions, a new streaming platform called will be launched in 2022. Cut . With a bright green logo but a dark background, Kick has revolutionized gaming platforms. streaming with an offer too good to refuse: it’s a clone of Twitch (in fact it rents Amazon’s services to operate) which does not force its streamers to place advertising, has a much more lax moderation policy and perhaps especially for those who make a living or want to make a living from the activity, they offer a profit distribution of 95% for the streamer and 5% for the platform.

All this, coupled with hiring big names to be there exclusively as Amouranth , xQc , Coscu and several others, have caught the attention of the community, generating growth that, while not reaching Twitch levels, has been explosive: In 69 days they reached 1 million subscribed users and in 7 months they reached 10 million. something that took Twitch 5 years, knowing that today the streaming It’s a massive business and Twitch was expected to become a pioneer of the genre.

But what is behind this real offer of money which obviously does not seem profitable? I don’t know much about business, but keeping just 5% of profits on a platform that also has no obligations is something that can doubtfully be sustained over time. And all the more so since it is precisely the operating costs that have forced Twitch to create new profit distributions and to open up so that, for example, its streams can be replicated on other platforms.

The answer lies in the hands of two Australian businessmen: Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani who became famous and built their fortune thanks to Staking a virtual casino that has the grace of being able to work not only with local currencies, but with more than 20 cryptocurrencies. This crypto casino, which operates from the tax haven of Curaçao, has generated monumental profits. Last year alone, the company raised more than $2.6 billion for its founders, who also became known worldwide thanks to sponsorship from the sporting world: they appear on the British Everton jersey , during UFC fights and are even sponsors of the Alfa Romeo Formula 1 team. from 2023.

These are the same people who decided to launch Kick, apparently with the aim of offering an alternative with less strict regulations and a better distribution of profits to try to attract as many people as possible. But although it wants to present itself as a site for playersthe truth is that not making the link with Stake and the online casino business is impossible .

One of the main reasons why Twitch started removing users from its platform is because the proliferation of shows with people betting in casinos which is not only illegal in some countries, but also complex because Twitch’s main audience is teenagers and young people, who were invited by their streamers to access betting sites using codes to earn money. money easily. It has often been said that betting sites generate fake accounts with rigged winning odds to show them that they are winning money much faster and more frequently. This is now over and although it is still possible to find this type of content, it is among those that are prohibited and can result in your account being suspended.

Of course, being part of a holding company backed by a betting site, at Kick, these types of transmissions are not illegal, quite the contrary. for a long time was the most popular category on the page and at the time of writing, it was Kick’s third most popular category, with significant space on its site and 85,000 viewers worldwide watching others play roulette, slots slots and blackjack.

Kick’s economic model is therefore clear: it is not really a site which aims to revolutionize the streamingbut rather, through its unprecedented profit sharing system, appeal to as many people as possible to try Kick, taking their audience with them and betting that a large portion of them will end up being interested in some way. or another in betting.

Another fact: in countries where it is not possible to display advertising for betting sites, the Stake logos are replaced by that of Kick.

And to attract as many people as possible, Kick is also very lax with its rules. Even if pornography remains the limit, There are Kick accounts that stream sports events without permission, series and movies directly from the server and much more. without major repercussions. Something that is appreciated by the streamer who is always afraid that the account on which he has worked for years will be reduced and by the public who, in general, are not going to reject the content that they can see for free.

The problem with this lack of content moderation is that Kick quickly became a sort of no man’s land with which, with the desire to attract attention and add visitors to obtain profits from the site, they are able to do anything, even content that could be outside the law.

I told them that the third most viewed category was casinos, because the first and second are IRL (an abbreviation of in real life) And I’m just chatting which are categories that have nothing to do with video games, but rather with streamers chatting on camera, talking about their lives, giving opinions or, as I already mentioned, streaming games.

However, the most curious category is IRL, since it involves transmissions in motion, that is, with a camera that transmits the life of users, whether in the street, at a party , while traveling or in reality, any event. This format is not exclusive nor an invention of Twitch, but in Kick, since there are no moderation tools, What users do to get famous is crazy .

We’re talking about people who create altercations with the public to record fights, users who record themselves taking on challenges that involve stealing food from passers-by, throwing people into the water or even taking an Uber driver’s cell phone and throwing it out the window. As if it were the Wild West, a Kick stream seems to have no limits. And of course, Its most searched stars are people who have been banned from Twitch because of their content and who now enjoy the ability to be in front of a camera with virtually no restrictions.

“Defending free speech” and “being against cancel culture” are some of the flags Kick waves to explain himself, while It is possible to find compilations of terrible moments broadcast by Kick on sites like YouTube . And although in February of this year the site’s terms of service were updated after several accusations of on-air and online sexual harassment by its stars, controversy today continues to be Kick’s way of shine.

Two recent examples: Jack Doherty a young YouTuber now focused on the world of Kick, made a show in which he recorded himself behind the wheel of his McLaren. His cameraman filmed how he read his messages at times when he should have had his hands on the wheel, which, combined with a rainy road, caused his car to crash on live broadcast. Of course was recorded committing a crime which got him suspended from the site, but he clearly did everything he did because he felt the freedom that nothing would happen by broadcasting like that.

And more recently, during the creation of TwitchCon an event where content creators and fans of the Twitch platform come together to celebrate streaming culture, dozens of Kick personalities came to do live broadcasts, annoying, harassing and giving their colleagues a really bad time . The reaction was so great that Twitch had to explain that in future editions there would be more care and one of the founders of Kick also came to defend himself, thanking Twitch for welcoming its community, but that what happened was only the work of a minority. A fairly vocal minority otherwise.

The truth is that, whether or not it is just a technique to attract more people to betting sites, today with over 20 million users, Kick needs to start taking the value of running a platform more seriously that can affect the lives of other people, not only because of its scope, but also because of the actions its users perform in the real world. Kick seems to be even more interested in growing in a discriminating way by, once again, making offers that are hard to refuse, such as setting up a weekly payment system to its creators instead of the monthly payment or the payment that is carried out when a certain accumulated amount is reached. other pages have done it.

Growing responsibly and maturing is essential to maintaining the survival of a service and when these changes come, we will need to know how to manage a group that has arrived with the promise of digital freedom as well as the way digital spaces are built and funded. Today, it is practically a utopia.