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These pictures are from an account that only posts rage bait political content. https://www.instagram.com/redstreamnet
They’re not trying to help you. They’re trying to selfishly protect their business.
When we’ve made statements like this one before, it’s included a pledge to keep making improvements, and while we are working on these updates, they haven’t happened at a speed or magnitude that is acceptable
I know nothing about this game, but even with no context, yikes. They basically openly admit they’re just making the same toothless apology again in the opening paragraph. That’s bold!
Do you have experience in big tech? Because its completely normal for each of these app teams to have 3-5 developers at minimum, plus a manager, a product person and likely a QA as well. Even when not working on brand new features, these teams are all running A/B tests, working on marketing campaigns, keeping the SDKs and service frameworks up to date, responding to help requests etc. Every time there’s “new bits”, for example, its because a team of people made that.
You don’t have to believe me but I’ve personally worked in systems like this and there’s more copmlexity than you’re imagining.
Twitch actually has minimal IT - they host on AWS because they’re owned by Amazon. They pay a discounted rate but otherwise don’t maintain their own server farms or hardware.
A minute after posting this, I can think of way more necessary roles. Let’s start by mentioning that all this infra needs to run 24/7 with 100% uptime so that some 30 year old can jerk off to a VOD of Amouranth at 3am without a single frame drop.
And all of this is just core product people.
Then you need HR, managers to hire, fire & promote all these people, lawyers, customer service reps, content moderators, executive assistants, and the facilities maintenance people who refill their snack closets.
Its hard to run a huge online service like Twitch.
Twitch builds and maintains the following infrastructure:
- Website + web video player
- iOS App
- Android App
- Fire TV app
- Playstation 4 app
- Xbox One app
- Chromecast app
- Apple TV app
- Real-time chat backend
- Search services
- Distributed video storage backend services (VODs)
- Content recommendation services
- Account services (streamer accounts and viewer accounts)
- Monetization services (subscriptions, bits)
- Twitch Studio + Soundtrack apps for creators
All of this has to run at Twitch scale (140 million MAUs)
And these are just the technical teams. Then add on UX designers, marketing, product and business development, not to mention Business Intelligence data scientists.
The problem is that its so expensive to build from scratch. All Unity does is build just the engine, and that’s enough to make it a 7000 person company. Trying to build a game engine and then an actual game on top is a herculean effort.
This is why open source software is so important. It enables these small companies to pool their resources and share an engine as long as they each contribute fixes back.
The person who runs Unity is a shithead.
I’m on the extreme end. Any kind of “recommendations” are an immediate and complete turn off for me. Not just the obvious stuff like “sponsored” posts or “algorithmic social media” feeds. I abhor and avoid even things like Spotify recommendations, which most people consider useful.
Whether they intend it or not, these engines are built to funnel you back into the lowest common denominator, most broadly appealing stuff, because that’s what the algorithm sees gets the most clicks from the average person. Sure, everyone likes oatmeal, but that’s because its bland and inoffensive.
I want to find my own shit through my own idiosyncratic process.