Play2Live turns promises to streamers into viable options

How do streamers earn an income from playing video games and is it possible to increase it sufficiently for streamers to really make a living from playing video games? The best way to answer these questions is to look at how streamers earn an income on Twitch.

The streaming platform Twitch is by far the biggest social video service and community for gamers, with more than 100 million monthly unique viewers and 15 million daily active users. It currently has 220,000 streamers registered as “affiliates” and 25,000 streamers registered as “partners”. There are various ways for streamers to make money:

1. Subscriptions: Viewers can support a streamer by subscribing about $5 per month. This gives the viewer certain benefits like access to badges and emotes. An established streamer will earn $3 of the $5 per subscriber.
2. Advertising: Twitch produces an “effective cost per 1000 impressions” (eCPM) rate for each streamer, depending on their viewership, and taking into account the likelihood of adblocking. Streamers can expect an eCPM of $0.70 rising to about $2,50 per 1000 views.
3. Donations/Cheering with Bits: Streamers have a “donate” button on their sites, where viewers can make donations via PayPal to support them. Most streamers say that they earn more from donations than from subscriptions, although it is less regular.
4. Game sales: Streamers can promote the games they are playing and share in revenue if viewers buy them.
5. Amazon affiliate program:  Amazon pays between 4% and 8.5% for anything purchased within 24 hours of it being promoted on the streamer channel.
Well established streamers may also receive sponsorships. This can be payments for playing a game or using certain gear and can grow significantly.

All of this looks very promising. But there are some significant caveats. The most important is that these revenue streams are not open to all streamers: casual streamers cannot earn anything. Affiliates can have some subscription revenue but cannot participate in advertising revenues. In general, it seems that it is likely to be difficult for average streamers to make a living from Twitch alone.

Play2Live - blockchain-based streaming platform for gamers and eSports fans, seems to offer a significant improvement on these conditions. This is partly because it is blockchain-based and therefore offers monetization options not possible on traditional sites. It is also different because of the way it has been conceptualized as a single ecosystem offering a full suite of services.

The primary participants are the viewer, the streamer and the eSports tournament organizer. However, Play2Live also offers high levels of interoperability, encouraging other partners, products and users to join its ecosystem. This includes providers of games, skins and in-game items, app developers, major tournament organizers, ticketing systems and bookmakers. Everybody can be part of the peer-to-peer interaction and everybody — even the viewer — can earn money.

No other platform offers the total gamification option, the crowdfunding and escrow services for streamers and organizers, the P2P CDN option or the wide variety of interactivity options for streamers and viewers that are available on Play2Live.

The platform will have 25 modules, with revenue options from 15 of them. Blockchain technology ensures transparency and certainty in payment to all parties.

A single currency, the Play2Live LUC, will be the only means of payment on the platform, regardless of whether this is for content creation for streamers, payment to a viewer for winning a bet, purchasing an in-game item or participating in a duel with another viewer. In addition, up to 10% of the LUC generated as revenue for Play2Live will be distributed as rewards to users who are most active on the platform.

LUC will be a huge drawcard to the site. Unlike Twitch’s Bit, the LUC has both utility and intrinsic value. Not only will it be used for all the services, but it can also be traded for other cryptocurrencies or for fiat currencies, either on the Play2Live exchange gateway or on public exchanges.

Streamers will have 11 revenue options — compared to 5 on current streaming platforms. The Play2Live ecosystem has been set up to create the most favorable conditions for streamers. This includes monetization as shown in the table and also includes the ability for streamers to alter aspects of the economy to suit themselves and their viewers better — eg choosing subscription fees rates or allocating a percentage of advertising revenue to viewers. They will also be paid from their very first streaming, without any limitations. Streamers are B2B partners, incentivized to attract new viewers.

Viewers are also incentivized. Not only are they able to interact directly with streamers and each other, but also, they have 5 revenue streams. They are paid for watching advertisements, for being part of consensus voting, for winnings from the in-built betting and gambling systems and for sharing computer resources via a P2P CDN service.

There is a unique approach to dealing with the problem of adblocking: advertising is disabled by default. Viewers can support the streamer by choosing to watch the advertising and are then rewarded with LUC for watching. Streamers then earn advertising revenue typically associated with commercials, banners and branding. The platform also allows for comprehensive marketing campaigns, and blockchain provides a transparent performance tracking system.

A really interesting source of revenue is the last on the list above: rewards for activity within the platform. One of these is that viewers can vote with tokens for the format they want for a tournament. Revenue is shared with tournament organizers and streamers who develop special content according to the criteria set by viewers.



Play2Live achieved hard-cap of token sale in March, 2018, raising $30M.

Sign up for the MVP of the streaming platform here: https://p2l.tv/
Website: https://play2live.io/en/