Kick trip! The platform that threatens to take the leadership of streaming from Twitch has made a fool of itself in a notorious way in the last few hours. And no matter how much money they have and that they are putting on the table when trying to make themselves known, they are not going to make what happened easily forgotten. The story is so surreal that you have to tell it step by step.
As I’m sure you already know, Kick is trying to be the new Twitch. He has started by promising something that everyone likes: more money. They have such an open portfolio that it is said that there could be guaranteed income even for streamers who do not have many views. But all the promotion they are doing has been greatly altered by the event of the last few hours that xQc has starred in, who, moreover, is their first legendary streamer.
skid to glory
Let’s get in situation. A few days ago it was announced that Kick had promised xQc to pay him $100 million for two years of work on his platform. Of that amount, 70 million would be guaranteed and the rest would depend on the incentives received throughout the work period. Even without that $30 million, considering xQc wasn’t signing an exclusivity, he was looking at an incredible offer. Also, he was promised that he would have more freedom and that he could get to do things that he never got to do on Twitch. That made the streamer see the gates of heaven, because money + freedom is something that all professionals in this job aspire to.
The problem was that xQc, who I’m sure you also know by his real name, Felix Lengyel, took the idea of ​​being able to do new things to the letter. And in the stream that he did a few hours ago, he possibly got a little carried away by the concept, because he made all the alarms go off on Kick.
Kick reacted in the worst possible way
What xQc did was watch a movie while the stream was on. With any movie it would have been a problem, but it is safe to say that I was watching The Dark Knight, the Batman movie directed by the famous Christopher Nolan. For the streamer, the idea of ​​being able to organize a “movie night” seemed like a most attractive proposition to share with his followers. And, starting with the idea of ​​trying new things, it was something that interested him. But, as you can imagine, neither Kick allows movies to be broadcast in the same way that Twitch does not. What happened in that moment?
As we were saying, the alarms must have started ringing in the Kick offices. Can you imagine? The company has paid $70 million to a streamer who “starts” his broadcasts by putting on a movie and breaking the rules of the system. With any other streamer, Kick would have hit the ban button instantly. It has happened before and it will happen again. But how do you ban a streamer you have on your payroll?
Given the situation, Kick decided to act. But, instead of calling the streamer on the phone or contacting him by private message or through another type of channel, what one of the people in charge of the platform did was get into the streamer’s chat. The film had already been broadcast for more than an hour and, in the panic of receiving a complaint from Warner Bros., the person in charge of acting put a message in the streamer’s chat. He said the following:
Hello, we would like to notify you that streaming that specific content is breaking our DMCA (Copyright Act) policy. Therefore, we kindly ask you to end the live stream and be aware that we will have to delete the current recording that contains this content.”
xQc’s response was one of surprise, acknowledging that it was logical and looking annoyed that he didn’t realize it before starting. In the extract from the video of the stream that you can see above this paragraph, you can see the message posted in the xQc chat, giving a rather ridiculous image in general and showing that in Kick they have serious problems when it comes to managing a service like this.
As was discussed before, in some ways it seems that Kick has started the house with the roof and this is not going to be something that is going to help them in their progression. Taking the crown from Twitch is something that seems to be too big for them. At least for now.
