By now we’ve all heard about Google buying Twitch, with rumours about how the streaming platform might ultimately be combined with YouTube. But now those rumours can all be put to rest as Twitch has declined Google’s offer of $1 billion due to fear of an antitrust complaint.
Forbes recently reported that the deal between Google and Twitch was never finalised due to an antitrust issue that supposedly Google felt as though it could face blowback for its dominance in online videos from regulators, what with YouTube already being the most popular website for video content. Because of this, even though Twitch had held talks about the acquisition, they were unable to agree on the size of any potential breakup fee.
But Twitch didn’t stay untouched for long; this highly popular streaming platform, which claims to have had 55 million unique visitors watching the live gaming content in July alone, is reported to have been snapped up by Amazon for $970 million.
“Amazon and Twitch optimize for our customers first and are both believers in the future of gaming.
Being part of Amazon will let us do even more for our community.
We will be able to create tools and services faster than we could have independently. This change will mean great things for our community, and will let us bring Twitch to even more people around the world.”
-Twitch CEO Emmett Shear
Amazon has become increasingly more involved with gaming culture in recent years; with Amazon creating small games through their in-house gaming studio, acquiring Double Helix Games (developers of Killer Instinct), as well as hiring Kim Swift (Portal designer) and Clint Hocking (worked on Far Cry). It’s also a well-known video-game vendor which has risen to being the second most popular in the world, just behind Steam!
Buying Twitch will only increase their knowledge in gaming culture and promote its services to the gamers online who both watch and stream gameplay through Twitch.tv.
“Broadcasting and watching gameplay is a global phenomenon and Twitch has built a platform that brings together tens of millions of people who watch billions of minutes of games each month — from The International, to breaking the world record for Mario, to gaming conferences like E3. And, amazingly, Twitch is only three years old… Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, and we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community.”
-Jeff Bezos founder and CEO of Amazon, said in a statement
This deal is expected to be finalised within 4 months.
