 Okay. So apparently Twitch Korea is shutting down. Good evening. And thank you for being here. For those who don't know me, I'm Dan Clancy. I'm the CEO of Twitch. So I think many of you know we made an announcement today about Korea. I went on the stream earlier in Korean where we had translators. This is a stream designed for the English speaking audience. If any of the Korean audience was not able to make it, we're not doing the translation in this stream. So let me first of all take a moment to explain what we're doing this year. I wanted to go ahead and explain the announcement that we made this morning. I suspect most of you that are here have read the announcement and most importantly explain why we made the announcement and also some of the details about the announcement. To be clear this was a very difficult decision. It's something that we have put off for some time. We've looked at a variety of other options. It is a very difficult decision because of the Korean streamers that currently use Twitch to build their communities and the value that they offer and many of them support themselves through Twitch and then even more of them find community through Twitch. I know Joe. So it's a very difficult decision and I'll try and explain why we made it. We will be trying to answer some questions in chat. We have a team that's looking at to try and pop some out. I'm keeping an eye on chat as well. I may see something. Obviously we won't be able to answer all of them. I've also picked out some questions that we think are the most common questions that I will answer right off at the beginning. So first of all in terms of getting to the announcement as we mentioned in the blog we announced today that we have decided to shut down the Twitch business in Korea as of February 27th of next year. So I realize this is very disappointing news for the Korean creators and the Korean audience as Twitch is an important part of their lives. Many of them have invested a great deal of time creating active communities on Twitch. And so this is obviously very disappointing. I don't want to talk about why we're doing but also what we can do to help support you in this transition. So ultimately the reason for doing this is because the cost to operate Twitch in Korea is prohibitively expensive. We spent a significant effort working to reduce these costs. The costs that dominate are the network usage fees. Korea operates differently than the other markets that we operate in in terms of the relationship we need to have with the network providers and what we need to pay for them to deliver the bits that we are serving to the end users. The end result is that it's over 10 times more expensive to operate in Korea in terms of the network usage fees. As I said we've been looking for ways to solve this problem. First we looked at a peer loss for serving the fees and we did an experiment on this. This reduced some of the cost but not nearly enough and we were still at over 10 times the cost of other countries and it was still at a point where it could not break even. We also adjusted source quality to 720p and while this made improvements the improvements weren't enough and the fundamental problem in Korea is because of the cost of delivering the bits. As Twitch grows we actually lose more money in Korea. When we say it's not profitable we don't mean taking into account any of our fixed costs of running the business in terms of me or engineers or anything else. We're just talking about the variable cost of running the service in Korea and it creates a problem when as you get increased usage which is obviously what all of our creators want is they want us to invest in getting more viewers to enjoy Twitch that in fact you lose more money as more people watch and enjoy Twitch. We've been operating in this way for quite some time about three years ago that's when we started looking at how can we do this in a manner that is sustainable over time and responsible and that's why we've been working and doing so many experiments to see if there was a pathway forward and we finally had to make the decision that we did not see that pathway. So let me go into some of the details so on the 27th the viewers in Korea will no longer be able to purchase Twitch products and streamers will not be able to monetize through the Twitch products so both sides of it and so you won't be able to subscribe or give GIF subs or use bits up until that date Twitch will operate as it does today. The final payout to the Korean creators will be on March 16th and and then there'll be you know ongoing things from there so we are still determining exactly what will happen after this date in terms of accessing Twitch again we are we're terminating operations it is likely that we will need to block streaming from Korean IPs but what we need to do will be determined in a manner where we ensure that we comply with Korean regulations. They have weird internet laws and stuff there man. That's one of the reasons why we cannot determine exactly what we will need to do after this point however we understand that a huge value for Twitch's ability to support your life and February 27th is when the monetization abilities will be turned off. So the next thing I want to talk about is what we can do to help streamers transition their communities. We know that these streamers have built their communities and it's very important for us to help them transition them. There are two alternative services in Korea Afrika TV and YouTube and so we want to do all that we can to help them move their communities. We've reached out to both of these services to try and get them to see what they want to do after these creators. The first part is creators being able to maintain their status so that if you're a partner on Twitch and you can monetize we'd like to make it so that you can monetize right away on these other platforms and same thing with affiliates ideally and then also seeing what else we can do to make it easier for moving the communities. On our end to be clear with this announcement any of the limitations on simulcasting do not apply to Korean streamers. We fully realize you will be promoting other services and want to figure out how we can help you do that. Ultimately you'll need to pick where you think you want to move your community. I expect initially you'll simulcast and then eventually you might even have some static notification on your stream so that people know where you ended up and what your channel is. Damn that would be crazy if they did that. If Twitch was like the Korean streamers, hey this streamer is now on this website go there. It affects Korean viewers. That would be insane. The thing that made a particularly different is all of the streamers that are building communities in Korea and the impact that this will have on them and that's one reason why it has taken us so long to do this. He said maybe they can do that. Why we've explored many other options. So now let me go through some of the other questions that I think will be common in here. Why are the economics of Korea so different from other markets? And I'm not an expert in all the details of the different agreements with network usage fees for other providers but for us we need to pay the network providers fees based on the amount of data that they have to deliver to the end users and as I said that is significantly more than the cost of streaming in other countries as a factor of 10. Another question why are we making the decision now? Again this is something we've been considering for quite some time and we've done experiments and looked at many other options and ultimately we felt like we needed to be upfront about what we're doing and I'll talk some of the other options we consider in a second. Do you have plans to re-enter the Korean market in the future? Is this a permanent decision? So obviously I don't know what may happen in the future. Obviously we're not planning to do that any time in the near term and would only do it if we felt like that was a viable way to to run the business and to be clear on this this has nothing to do with profits. It's about making sure that we are not losing money in Korea because and right now we've been losing a fair amount of money from Korea and of course the only way to come up with that is from revenue from the rest of the world and we felt like that was not the right long-term solution in this situation. So let me go to some of the other questions. So what other options did you consider and why didn't you choose one of them? So one option we considered was streaming at 480p. When we look at that that still did not get us to where we'd need to be. In addition it's unclear if that complies with Korean regulations in terms of the service that you need to provide in Korea and so it's not clear that would even have been a viable alternative in Korea. We looked at serving from outside of Korea. In fact this is the solution that a number of other internet services have pursued because this is not a problem that is unique to Twitch. Most recently Netflix began serving from outside of Korea. Meta has done this and other services. The reason we didn't choose this and just so you understand how this works what would mean is we would give the bits to an internet service provider let's say in Germany or Japan and then they would be responsible for delivering it to the Korean ISP. Now in this it's unclear if they would realize a different expense additional expenses in this which then of course would translate to us. More importantly we did not believe that our service in many cases would really be viable. For some users we felt Twitch would not be a watchable experience. We spend a great deal of time making sure that the interactive live video works well you don't have buffering and latency of course is a big factor for interactive live video as you have community in chat and we felt that for many users it would end up being not really a watchable experience and if we went down this pathway oh and one other factor it is unclear if this is actually allowed. In fact in the other cases when this has occurred legal action has been taken against the companies for serving from outside of Korea for the cost of the network usage fees at least most recently in the Netflix case. There was a lawsuit with Netflix a while back but they reached some agreement that worked for both parties that so it's not clear we would have been allowed to continue to do this but we felt like this would be giving false hope to our creators and in fact many of them would try and stay around to make it work but in fact their viewership would draw precipitously and we felt like in the end it would be worse for them that would be worse for them home because long term not think that long term the service could have been viable yeah stream serving from outside of Korea that sucks we also looked at charging users or streamers differently than in the rest of the world and eventually decided that was not clear again that it would have been really a viable service if we had chosen that option compared to other alternatives so what will happen in Korea after the shutdown date so I know this will be a big question and at this point we're not completely sure this depends in part on Korean regulations in terms of what we are allowed to do and how we're allowed to operate it is reasonable that we will probably need to block streaming from Korean IPs and what happens on the viewer side depends again in part on Korean regulations and what we're allowed to do it's driven more by that than the cost because the cost would be manageable given the size that we would be dealing with there one of the questions would also be what if I'm an IRL streamer visiting Korea so we understand that that is a use case lots of people travel to Korea we want people to travel to Korea if you do use a third-party cloud OBS and I won't mention the one that I use I don't want to promote that one over the other cloud OBS services but those would still be able to operate since you'd be streaming from the cloud OBS to Twitch and then locally you'd be streaming up to the cloud OBS and similarly many of the third-party services that support oh but that doesn't that doesn't fix so I think that that doesn't fix the financial work after it's about the conversions and stuff like that all right that highlights a few of the first questions now I'm gonna go to some of the questions we've pulled out from the chat I'm keeping an eye on chat but of course it is um quite busy so um yeah I mean if you're so it sounds like if you're incorporated in in America or something like that then you'd be okay make money I feel very bad Patrick um that is exactly at the the question is do you feel bad like obviously that there are um two alternatives they're different they're not the same as twitch and so I don't want to act like there isn't a meaningful impact as I've said in other places I think twitch is unique um one way they're doing this we're providing the time I know this and our assistance is we felt like that the other alternatives would have been slowly um diminishing Korea and slowly draining Korea and in fact the creators would have been making less money and it would have meaningfully impacted but we never would have come clean and told them about where we're going and where what the challenges were in operating Korea and we felt like in the end this would be better um in the long run for those creators but of course there's no easy answer here it's a difficult decision um can star well twitch consider restarting its business in Korea when the law is related to network access usage fees is adjusted to be in line with other countries um not ruling out anything in the future um right now we're only making decisions based upon what information we have right now um and so we obviously if the things change we'd obviously reconsider these decisions can viewers still watch in Korea um again I think this is one of the questions that we will need to determine what is allowed um uh we would probably serve from outside of Korea um some of the problems we would get in that with the amount of traffic we have right now in Korea would not be as acute because it would not be nearly as much traffic um but we are not certain what we will need to do at that point in time um and it's going to be important that we adhere to the regulations in Korea but it won't be a cost factor because I think again the amount of traffic we will see will be precipitously less it would just be people traveling from Korea or people in Korea um watching people outside of Korea uh from Rudy V. Tuber I'm a Korean streamer and I have one question at the previous stream you mentioned about supporting streamers to transfer on to another platforms can you can you tell me if you have any specific plans also does that mean we Korean streamers do not get banned for multi-platform streaming anymore um yeah so first of all in the second part to be clear we had already changed our policies around multi-platform streaming um there are some limitations that we state with multi-platform streaming none of those limitations apply to the Korean streamers affected by this decision um uh in particular you there is no issue with you promoting people to go to other services um in terms of specific plans this in part depends upon the other platforms um the first thing we're focused on is trying to make sure that monetizing creators can maintain some form of status when they transition but um this depends upon our conversations we've reached out to them and we will be updating you as we get feedback from them of what they're going to do to try and support um support all of you in this transition um the other thing that we will certainly do is be sharing information about what different streamers are doing and what is working well um I know as I think about it I think um you would probably start by simulcasting and then eventually you'd probably only stream on the other service which you might put a static um screen up while you're streaming that says come check me out over there um can subscribe and I'll say to all of the users that support Korean streamers um uh please at this time continue to support them until they can be fully transitioned to the other service um it's important to help them in this difficult time um you notice is since three years why only three months to streamers this is not fair so play per man um dude if they send now your notification when you go live on another website that would actually be insane um that'd be sick if they did that that'd be that would be a good what is the right a really really cool thing for them um uh we chose this because we do think delaying it actually um isn't the right solution for the streamer meaning if we said this will be six months um then it's easy for people to say oh well I don't have to worry about it now they don't they don't need to do that viewers will start moving right away they'd be doing that out of courtesy to their fact um Korean part of streamers it is much easier for everyone if we have a deadline in the reasonable future so that way viewers start adjusting their patterns and streamers start adjusting their patterns because if a few streamers leave but other streamers don't then viewers are stuck between two services and in the end as painful as this is I think it's better to um um you know make the transition happen if along the way we see we were wrong in the period we'll we'll consider that um and we'll see how this progresses uh why aren't twitch's competitors experiencing this high service cost um so I don't know the details of their operations um uh but we do know that many other people do experience these high service costs as I said um Netflix recently stopped serving in uh started streaming from outside of Korea meta has also run into problems due to this um now each of their businesses are different Netflix's business is very different than us uh in terms of their underlying cost structure of their business YouTube is a VOD business predominantly and again the cost structures of VOD is very different the idea of delivering from outside is a little more feasible um Africa operates very differently than us their local company we do not know what their costs are and if they're the same as ours as a local company uh but their cost structure they one way to think of it is and I don't think most people are upset I think most people are upset about the South Korean laws they built their company around and the economics their company around Korean and how this cost structure runs whereas we have not built all of our the way our our service operates around this um let's see how will this affect viewing experience um uh on Korean viewers specifically will we be able to watch in 1080p um so again there are no changes until 227 and then as I said we're working through the particulars after 227 depending on right end of February is that 227 of what would be allowed um I think it means 227 as in next three months in other countries February 27th um we've talked a lot about our obligation to run twitch is a sustainable business and where we're at right now um and right now um and in fact we did look at seeing if the um loss was small enough if we could just absorb it but it is a significant delta in terms of the cost versus of running the business and we have and and the problem is as Korea grows which it has grown then that cost keeps increasing and of course our streamers want us to invest in Korea growing because they want their communities to grow um because that is good for them they want more streamers to start streaming on twitch and so um we want to be we would be at odds with them if we were trying not to have the service grow from Jimbo max um thank you for the stream I have a question what implications would there be for partnered streamers in Korea are front implementing this change would they be prevented from streaming on twitch altogether um so um uh if you're a partnered streamer in Korea uh first of all one of the things that's important is where your country of residence is um which is something you fill out when you become affiliate or partner um I know some Korean streamers travel outside of Korea um and how we will handle this in terms of monetization it is about when you're identified with Korea as your country of residence um if if that if Korea is not your country of residence but you're in Korea some but you travel outside then when you're outside of Korea you'd still be able to stream um but if you're inside of Korea at some point after the February 27th day we would need to be taking actions to um to prohibit you from being able to stream and again what we need to do will be determined based upon the Korean regulations are there no sponsors that can manage twitch system in Korea and pay for it to twitch um it's a good question I think the simple answer is no in terms of if there's a third party that would cover this delta um I don't think there is um in terms of that which is unfortunate um mocha son is this the start of the downfall of twitch mocha son no not at all this is a unique thing did people have so many stupid questions market as I said um other businesses have had a similar problem operating in Korea and it is because of the network usage fees that is unique uh to Korea um let's see are there other regions in danger no um uh as I've shared this is unique to Korea um and this is not something that will um affect affect other regions um so can't so let's see so they can't just change their onboarding location no that would not be sufficient you can instill monetize but that doesn't mean you'll be able to stream from Korea if you change your country of residence you still maintain your account and your status but um when you're in Korea we will need to take actions to make sure you're not streaming from Korea let's see this this this whole thing sucks man from Killa Bean surely I wish I had a better understanding had a very decent leverage that the loss of your network usage would hurt their free income was this not attempted with the government body's responsible I feel like yes we we tried all avenues with this one of the challenges is this is a um challenge that many companies face um brought for the twitch community we are um uh very um passionate about twitch um in the broader scheme of things there are many other players um uh in this market and in fact we don't have the leverage um that uh you would think we might in terms of getting a sustainable rate but we've been working hard to make it um sustainable um from Prime Gaming um Army Noon can you reveal how much you pay for Korean telecommunications company um I can't talk about the specifics I don't know the details of each of the contracts I will repeat the Delta is even with the reductions that we have made like with peer-to-peer in 720p it's still 10 times higher than in other um other countries are we operating so um can you please put your answers to this in a central place so you can see them later so first of all we'll make this available in a VOD um we do have some of these um uh in our fact through our blog post and in fact we'll continue updating things um as we go along especially in terms of how we can help our streamers transition yeah and going to so basically starting in March South Korean Located Streams won't be able to stream um yes in terms of IP that is the likely outcome come in terms of specifically how that will be implemented again it depends upon what we need to do in terms of the regulations in the country yeah I mean this this whole thing sucks I wish I had a better understanding of like how like the net neutrality laws and stuff worked well I I do know that the laws and career should put that excuse you see in any way I wouldn't think so dance in queue people ask the dumbest questions um okay I see another question that I think we answered I swear at random can you consider streaming under 40p um there's certain regulations in Korea about um um what you can do to your service it it was unclear if even in fact we generally felt that transition your 480p probably would have been prohibited although we did not first but it was it was it was it was not clear that that would have been allowed um giving regulations in Korea well this effect events like League of Legends LCS or will Twitch be a good question I don't think they'll be able to do like this good question I think this is what I'm highlighting in terms of what we're allowed to do in terms of the regulations and come in the country how that will work and then there are other solutions they could use maybe they thought it might happen camey because the Netflix deal just happened a few months back and we'll be working on this and communicating with some of the developers there to see what what works hello I'm a viewer watching from Korea the problem with Korean services is largely the cost to telecommunication companies would it be possible to solve some of the damage by seeking help from streamers for a certain percentage of that portion yeah that is one of the options that we considered was um could we charge streamers to use the service um and we could have charged all streamers to use the service um and that's something that we we you know considered looked at um we didn't feel like in the end that that would end up being a viable alternative in terms of the number of people that would have been willing to um yeah it doesn't it doesn't really fix up any of the problems like the cost of delivering the business like in a perfect world like it would offset it kind of but it just doesn't it doesn't actually do anything are still most of them are just um um making enough to pay their bills um uh and to get by um given the amount of the cost it would have been a significant um uh cost um now it could have been spread out across all of the smaller streamers that are streaming for fun but it's not clear that they would have paid um much so we felt like in the end that would have been one of these efforts that uh gave streamers hope um and some streamers may have done it um others would not have um and we would have ended up in the same place for most streamers but it would have been more drawn out and it would have run into this problem where some would be moving their communities some would not be moving their communities um which would have actually hurt both of them and as with all of these decisions we weigh these things heavily um and we think through what we think ultimately will be the right decision we don't have a crystal ball though um in terms of knowing how each of the options would have um fallen out but appreciate that thought and it's something that we definitely did look at um which will Korean streamer and viewer accounts be preserved in case the future allows the return thanks for the question um that is one thing that we need to determine what we're allowed to do um uh in terms of um with the regulators in terms of privacy we will certainly allow you to indicate that you'd like to keep your account the question is is it something that you opt in and say please i want to keep my account or that where you opt out and by default we keep your account but if you want us to delete it we delete it and that's something we need still need to determine in terms of the privacy regulations in korea and our ability to retain the information but at a minimum you would have the ability to say no please keep my account active um that both would allow you access to your account if things change and also when you're outside of korea it would provide access to your account so we very much would like that um in terms of any korean streamers um if for any reason anything would change um or if you would move from korea where now you're living somewhere else we would transition your status um okay we're eventually going to need to off-board you from partner and affiliate in terms of our ability to pay you because of this um the processing and right now all of our payment vehicles are in korea but um so so if you for any reason you then if you get paid in america if you live in america you get paid in america then you status so you don't have to re-earn that status for mushroom 49ers what about us military affiliated american citizens it's a good question mushroom 49ers um i don't know about the details there i don't know how the bases operate um in terms of the ip addresses but it's something we can look into i mean america living in korea but my money goes to an american account can i still monetize so uh becky b plays um if in your account korea if your country of residence is outside of korea then this will not affect yeah okay so this this goes back to what i was just saying um if you if you live outside of america outside of korea you're sorry outside of korea you live in america hypothetically to purchase um on february 27th purchase any bits um you could also technically stream to like an iRL toolkit or something in terms of streaming um that's something still to be determined as i said if you're yeah true that would mean you have to pay taxes outside of korea true cloud obs services um that come to twitch those come from outside korea so the the key thing is what we're getting the thing about is what we're doing with respect to streams that we see coming from korea did you consider raising the cost of monthly subscriptions even globally or in korea to offset this we did we wouldn't do it globally because again that creates the same problem um that's what he said earlier and it wouldn't we wouldn't really solve it but we did consider raising them in korea and again given the cost delta um if this was a small delta then we would have just kept going as we were today but the cost delta was fairly significant so any of the other changes we would have had to make would have been fairly significant and we wouldn't have felt like they would have succeeded in terms of being able to maintain twitch it would have just dragged things out and in the end we were looking for a solution that we felt was a sustainable solution so we continue to service the korean community people in korea don't have access to vods do they um right now we had to adjust our vod policy in korea um because of the so basically if you live in korea already done that if you basically move to america impact um uh if you can you would have to get a visa you'd have to get paid in america you want to pay taxes in america sometimes you would have to do you'd be an american right you're getting paid as an american um financial you could still technically stream in korea i'm picking out summer you the owner if you are streaming to like a uh like a cloud service like irel toolkit or something that so you're streaming to the cloud you're streaming to an rtmp server buoy that's one of these questions that i think that goes off to um like let's i mean it'll be on like a twitch server in california or new york or something like that how they operate so that would work let's see what's allowed and what would be allowed with the regulations but obviously we would like to keep um that's important content that's never gonna work that way yeah well i know what i'm saying is like this is the only way that it would work of that sort that comes out of korea so um i hope an expectation is we can find a solution because the intent is not to impact um that content uh it's jake and bake here if jake i see somebody answering i think one of jake and bake's questions um that um if you're going through a cloud obs um then that is not coming from korea and so in terms of you if you're traveling in korea that's what i was just talking about you should be able to you should be able to continue that because we do think korea it's a wonderful country lots of irel streamers like to go to korea we'd like to continue people to be able to visit korea highlight korea um i guess as i've said it's the center uh it's a center of gaming and esports and so we expect people will continue to be engaging in and going through korea oh what about starlink um starlink is in um uh end user option that is separate um i do not know the prevalence of starlink in korea but people have no idea what that's i have a world where she is um in terms of its adoption you don't have a literal like yeah don't you still be able to stream on twitch after the 27th we haven't announced when and what we would do after the 27th for those people that are still trying to stream um but uh that'll be something that we are um determining what will be allowed with respect to the regulations from uh birkin came it's really sad as far as i understand there's nothing you can do but instead of shutting down i wish you could continue to be in korea even if the viewing experience was lower this is sort of the thing we're trying to understand because we know that there are lots of creators outside of korea that korean residents would like to view um uh which is separate from our korean creators um uh and at least in other countries where we don't have we don't operate exactly so i think those kinds of questions we are not required to block access to that for people that are still trying to access um the koreans in the rest of the world there are there are the streamers in the rest of the world there are other countries that we do not have uh like monetization set up where we do not operate um so what will happen then will depend in part upon what um is allowed with respect to regulations and that's something that we still need to determine but i i share your feeling um birkin cngc any progress on ab1 we'll be talking about that in the future but i don't think right now it's the time to talk about ab1 um but i don't think people dude people people they're so like why like it's not even relevant into teaming up with streaming services still active um um in korea make things smoother for um users like transferring follow subscriptions and stuff we definitely are going to see what we can do the challenge with follows and subscriptions and that transformation is it requires the users consent and the streamers consent and so that becomes difficult because the user from a privacy perspective we can't transfer information about the user that is subscribing to a particular streamer unless that user agrees so it's unlikely we would be able to just transfer follows and i think the best way is going to be for streamers to be streaming and saying follow me now subscribe to me follow me now subscribe to me um you know what about this i actually i actually halfway agree with you travel the world because you're right people do have to ask questions to learn you're right yes but also people asking about like xqc or ab1 like things that don't even make any sense obviously yes there's like question mark um we're like starling because they do not listening that's that's that's what i'm laughing at but you are right uh your ability to stream people gotta ask questions to learn you're right i'm exactly how uh uh we can do this again uh that depends upon what uh the korean regulations allow so i'm sorry i can't give you a definitive answer there um but it is because we want to support that need um that we are not um uh we are we're leaving open the details of what we need to do um with respect to that did he mention irel streamers traveling to korea yep we covered that what have people paid for a year sub to korean streamers to streamer keep the cash or viewers get a refund at twitch um the viewer can request a refund um so we're going to go through notifying viewers and viewers can request a refund um uh and uh we encourage viewers to continue supporting their streamers as they transition and we will work to try and make it as smooth as possible i don't want to say i'm surprised because i'm kind of not um but it's like i have like a i'm really happy that they're they're wanting to be supportive of of transitioning people's audiences to other platforms if they need to still be able to stream from korea where the ip blockage blocked the chance to have any local streams without third party cloud services um that depends upon what the um uh regulations allow us to do i think there is a reasonable chance that we will need to do ip blocking um if it's coming from a korean ip but that's something that we won't um uh we won't have the final say on we need to work with the regulators there and korean streamers still use third party monetization tools on twitch to make a profit they are still able to use third party monetization tools a number of talked about what about starlink and just you know starlink is a way that a user can get um access and in fact it would not use like if we're streaming from outside of korea um then we would deliver to starlink outside of korea and in fact we would not have the network usage fees that wouldn't solve the problem for us just to make everyone get starlink i'm not even familiar with the um uh what the status of starlink is in korea right now yeah for bam a burn eyed girl um uh i think um uh you know i'm a small streamer here in the us i'll be visiting korea and want to share my travel experience with my community will this affect my ability um uh it again we don't know what will be happening um after the 27th in terms of korean ip um but um if you use a cloud obs which um is commonly used then you should still be able to share with your community using the cloud i feel like i feel like you're getting a lot of repeat questions at this point i don't want to stop watching this because this is something that's so like that i know there are a lot of other questions there yeah in terms of a if you if you have a us residency since being stationed here in korea will a vpn work i won't go into the details of in general that is as you are operating a vpn um if you have a residency elsewhere then that also may be an option for you yeah in fact was somebody said this if everyone this transition will be yeah i mean it's it's it's like a net neutrality thing this affects every streamers as much as you can now it affects everybody like i don't even know if they can go to youtube that would be wonderful i'd really appreciate that um as that will ease the transition will this affect all twitch pretty much i think we've answered that i know they'll continue to be questions i'll continue to try and provide clarity um uh we very much i want to go ahead and wrap up by saying i think you can see this was not a decision we wanted to make um even as we made the decision we reconsidered it repeatedly i mean realistically the only had a head of steam going to implement it to see if there were other options we could pursue i want to highlight the reason we didn't pursue them because we felt like that in the end would actually be a disservice to the korean streamers because we felt like it would lead them to believe that this would be viable long term and if we did not think that was a long-term viable it would have just led to a slow um uh reduction in the twitch experience and it would have slowly moved people over which would have hurt our streamers and our viewers and we felt like making a clean announcement as opposed to just um uh slowly making it that korea was not viable was the better decision i want to thank all the korean streamers again um uh and their communities this is a very difficult um decision sad day we're very sorry to have to do this and we want to do all we can to support you um as you try to move your communities over to other services so thanks for being here appreciate it damn yeah that uh that sucks um i mean i think i think the big thing that that that we can see here obviously like from my perspective it's it's one of those things that's like um we we heard about like the twitch perspective of things right but for me too it's like um i have a lot of friends right that i've made over the years from from korea so obviously i'm gonna be be like this is this sucks right like it's like i have close friends that i've made throughout the years all that stuff so i really hope that like they're they get their stuff figured out it's very clear that this was like an omega tough decision that they had to make a twitch and it's not really it doesn't really seem like it's on them at all it's it's the Korean laws and and the fact that uh i i wish i had a better understanding of exactly how net neutrality worked i mean kudos to them for going live like right after the answer and being like yo we're just gonna talk about it and do a little bit q&a but i mean this kind of stuff yeah i can it can't happen anywhere you're right um it can it can literally happen anywhere and it's it's happening in korea so it looks like the solution right now is to move to another platform like africa tv or maybe youtube people they said youtube but honestly like if netflix is having these problems if twitch is having these problems i don't know maybe youtube just bites the bullet needs the cost realistically the only place where you'd have any sort of like uh i mean i would i if i was if i was a korean streamer i would probably go youtube i would i would probably go youtube especially if i had a western audience i would really go in that direction but the only one with real 100 certainty long term or i say 100 the one with the highest amount of certainty long term would be africa tv and africa tv is not really um it's not that big of a website and they were in scheme of things but it's really popular in korea that's really like you're only two options because then everything else that's not is there any other streaming service in korea that i don't know about no kick is not in korea like a korean streaming service there are two local ones in youtube so there's africa tv and what's the other one naver naver v live i mean here's the thing it's like people people from outside companies from outside of korea can do this they can they can uh bite the bullet on it but it's it's just something that doesn't really make any sense right and that's that's kind of the point that they hit on on twitch so it's not to say that like uh somebody like kick wouldn't do that i just think that if i'm a korean streamer i don't know knowing that that's the case for them i wouldn't i i don't know what i would do i mean that that seems it's it's that that's very scary ten times the cost is crazy yeah i don't know maybe maybe maybe kick is just all good and it's all fine but um i feel like if if that was me i would probably go youtube that youtube seems like the wise decision there um where it's like the it's the mix of uh it's kind of the apex of like risk because they're so big and they have so much i mean i i think if anybody can do it it's youtube um sometimes that's just kind of the apex of risk versus yeah that hurts that's rough man i i'm i feel so bad man i i really really do i really really do now the other solution would be if you can apply for a visa and you can if you're willing to if you want to move out of korea i mean let's say you move to america or something and you pay american taxes and you you are an american then that's the other solution the other solution is you do that uh you'd be fine you'd you'd transfer everything over technically even if that was the case i i don't think you can i don't think you can like get it i don't know i don't know how the laws work if you can like get a visa or whatever let's say you want to move like you want to live in korea but you want to have like a visa and everything for america if you can stay in korea i have no idea how the laws work but uh if you can stay in korea stream stream to a cloud server stream to an rtmp cloud server uh the obs has actually run out of a server in los angeles new york texas something like that but i i don't think that would even work now i yeah i don't know how jenny situation works jenny did get a house in texas jenny does own a house in texas i don't know jenny might be okay here's some good news if you're streaming korea and use our service your stream enters switches service in the usa regardless of where you actually are as such you will be able to use our service to stream twitch even to twitch blocks going live directly from korea uh yeah that's that's what i was just talking about so that that is a that is that but that this doesn't really work for people being able to like actually stream work in korea you know what i mean so no chat this does not mean you can you can go marry your favorite korean streamer okay like come on this does not mean your your your favorite korean streamer all of a sudden wants to get married to you okay um except for me in my case i will be marrying charming joe and but for you guys uh no yeah that's not gonna be the case yeah she said she loved me no she said i love you guys she was talking about me specifically on an individual level no oh man dude this is uh this is a hard one dan mentioned something that was uh i think it was wise he talked about like people splitting up and changing platforms and uh when the viewers kind of get stuck in limbo and they're like do we go here do we go there it's very hard because some streamers have like more of a western community and some some korean streamers have more of a like a korean community like take a look at someone like jenny for example jenny has a lot of western viewers she has a lot of european viewers she has a lot of american viewers she she has a lot of viewers from from just around the globe right her situation might be particularly weird actually a lot of the korean iRL streamers are like that to be honest like uh yeah like hachoo or i just use jenny as an example right but but a lot of them are actually like that so so it is kind of weird um i think i think the point of wisdom that dan had was the viewers getting stuck in limbo and people not all moving together right because if you have a if you have some degree of a shared community and then it's like okay all the korean streamers are on africa tv right if all the of all the korean streamers are on africa tv it helps the transition a lot if all the korean streamers go to youtube it helps the transition a lot xbc is another really good example of somebody who has like a heavy western community there's a bunch of them right like a lot of a lot of the guys that we know have like heavy western communities i think what would be wise for those people is probably youtube over africa tv because i think going africa tv could be off-putting or it's just hard to get into if you maybe if you're if you're not korean it would probably be hard to get into watching streams on africa tv it's it's spelled africa yeah it's spelled africa i mean kick is going to have the same problems twitch has with this i have gone through an involuntary platform change some of you guys know that a lot of you guys don't know that it's been so many years but but i got banned on youtube i started streaming on youtube i got banned and then i came to twitch right and um i was i was doing well on youtube the last couple weeks i mean i was hitting like up to up to like 500 600 viewers at the time which this was in 2017 like that's pretty solid especially on youtube i ended getting a ban and then i moved to twitch and i remember i went from i think i i had literally just hit six i was looking at it and i just hit 600 viewers i just hit 600 viewers and i was climbing i was live for like an hour and uh or maybe i was live for like 30 minutes i don't know i was live for a short amount of time climbing it 600 viewers got banned whenever i went and i started streaming on twitch i went from this like five 600 number that i had a couple weeks prior to getting like 20 30 viewers on twitch which is actually like that's as many viewers as i had when i first started streaming my first ever stream i had 50 viewers and my second stream i had 30 and then i just slowly kind of grew from there uh 30 ish right so i basically restarted from from uh where i was on that first day so it's a lot for well i made youtube videos and stuff yeah i made i made paladin youtube videos and stuff so people had kind of gotten to know who i was so yeah i mean that is a lot for first stream but yeah so youtube as fan was wild man no i got banned because i was streaming wild private servers that's basically what happened to me so i i've gone through that platform change it is very very scary and it's very very hard it is not easy to change platforms going from youtube to twitch or something that for me uh was pretty difficult now at that time there's there's a few key differences one it was only myself two i couldn't stream the game i'll stream anymore so my content had to change there was honestly i mean another difference is that there's there's less money involved in streaming in 2017 there's now uh which is either good or bad good from the perspective of uh there's less shut up guys uh there is it was good from the perspective of like let's start with the bad it was bad from the perspective of like because there was less money involved it was it was a little bit scarier because i hadn't made i made ten thousand dollars like my first year streaming you know like that was like my like i made like 10k uh and in one year of streaming ish like i don't remember the exact number so because i i uh because i did not have uh i wasn't making a lot of money streaming it was like okay well like i'm banned and i was kind of doing it on the side while i was getting ready to go like coach football so i was like okay i'm still gonna keep trying to do this because like i kind of i gotta hit i got like i'm fishing and i got i got a bite right so i gotta keep going um but at the same time it wasn't like oh i'm gonna lose a massive amount of income uh now the bad part of it is is that i don't have a bunch of capital like saved up and and uh i'm like okay like if something happens like i have a backup plan because i didn't actually i was like minus like a hundred something thousand dollars at the point like i mean i was i was in the red red so how long were your streams back then i used to stream like four five hours two to three times a week yeah and i would make youtube videos and stuff like that so um my point being i'm just trying to apply my own personal experience to this um i know how difficult it is and how hard it is to try and get people to move from one platform to another and all the different like difficulties that comes comes with that the good part of this is it is a lot of people at once and because it's a lot of people at once it is it is news people are going to know about it people are going to hear about it inevitably you're not going to have a hundred percent conversion it is just not going to work that way right and it's that's just the reality of it but thankfully because it is not just you and it's a bunch of other streamers people like it's like the idea of like uh essentially has a similar effect to that of like a collective bargaining situation where you want to have a bunch of streamers move to to platform a b or c at the same time which keeps their ecosystem of viewers on that platform because they're like well my streamers already here i might as well just like three of my streamers are here so i can watch streamer a b c and stay on the platform that's kind of uh that's one of the pros as much as this sucks that is kind of like a a positive in that it's not you're not alone and because you're not alone um i i think that you're going to have a lot of support from the community as well right i i think that people are going to go and they're going to follow and and i would encourage people to do that like it's it's hard it is it is very hard to regrow i had a lot of help you know i had to regrow and then people knew me from who i was in the private server community you know it's like oh it's a span it's the rep palette and memer all kinds of stuff right and i got a lot of shout outs from soda and from azman and all these guys right and and i rebuilt up to whatever right because these guys got to know me so that helped me a lot it take people need help man people need help like this is uh this is not going to be something easy so like that's the biggest thing i could do is encourage that whenever these guys move platforms wherever they move if they move right if they don't come up with their other own solution to make sure to go and follow them you know and that's just yeah this is the truth so props to dan clancy for how he's handling this instead of being big corba uh yeah i mean like the the whole thing sucks i like i like dan a lot i like dan a lot but um yeah i like dan a lot and i think he's handling the situation as best as he can it's rough it's rough it just it's always it's always gonna be bad it's always gonna feel bad or something like this happens and you hope that it never happens right but but it did and it is so yeah well we'll see what happens what about ex-qc yeah exactly i mean it's i think it takes balls to to go live and to be like hey let's talk about this is exactly what's going on uh it sucks yeah there's nothing there's nothing that you can really do like you're you're kind of you're kind of stuck you don't really have an option yeah we all know at the end of the day this whole thing is 80 misgivs fault so it's like what are you gonna do