Michael Decker

Karmine Corp and Movistar KOI continue to dominate the viewership rankings for #LEC. I wouldn’t be surprised if the gap to the other teams becomes even bigger over the next years. They are very well positioned to grow their fanbases at a much faster pace than everyone else.

@roaldvanbuuren Considering how Great Britain is currently positioned in esports, they could greatly benefit from something like this.

This shows what's wrong with esports. Another stadium only built with a view on the top 1% spectacle. Why not add a space for esports businesses to set up shop? A place where you can do workshops, skill development, lectures, sharing of ideas and co-creation for those building in the space and craft a healthy ecosystem.

Danish esports is truly impressive. But you have to give them credit far beyond League of Legends. They have produced world-class players in almost every major esports title, as well as the greatest Counter-Strike team with players coming from a single country.

My reply to someone considering starting a video game company: The distribution of possible rewards for starting a video game company are generally not very good today. The market is well served, and gaining a foothold requires strong execution on both business and product issues, along with a substantial amount of luck. Plan to burn through seven figures with a not-great chance of making it back. If you do go for it, some bits of advice: Identify your customers clearly before you start. Not just a broad community, but specific people, and imagine them as you make decisions. Initially, build the smallest, most concise game you can imagine anyone paying for. It will still take much longer than you expect. Once something exists, hill-climb the value. Hopefully you will have some elements that clearly bring joy to people, which you can magnify. There will inevitably be tons of things that people find confusing, frustrating, or just boring that you will need to fix.

Maybe that’s one area where esports should take notes from mainstream entertainment. Longer events don’t necessarily mean higher quality. I’ve never attended an IEM Cologne grand final and thought, “Why didn’t they show two more BO3s today?” A quality event shouldn’t need eight hours to leave visitors satisfied.

Maybe that’s one area where esports should take notes from mainstream entertainment. Longer events don’t necessarily mean higher quality. I’ve never attended an IEM Cologne grand final and thought, “why didn’t they show two more BO3s today?” A quality event shouldn’t need eight hours to leave visitors satisfied.

Le point de départ de tout ça, c'est quand même un évènement à rallonge, qui commence à 16h, et qui est donc logiquement vide. C'est le dilemme de tout organisateur (que je rencontre aussi dans mon taf de tous les jours) Quand on organise un évènement de grand ampleur, cela représente de nombreux coûts: - Le lieu - Le matériel - Les moyens humains - La sécurité etc... Et la fausse bonne idée est de se dire "plus mon évènement dure longtemps, plus mon budget est amorti sur la durée" Mais cela engendre de nombreux problèmes: - Impossibilité pour les visiteurs d'être présents sur TOUT l'évènement (exemple ici à Madrid 🇪🇸) - Dilution de ton flux - Image écornée de ton évènement Il faut donc concentrer l'évènement sur des horaires où les visiteurs peuvent se déplacer, avec des temps forts qui pousseraient les visiteurs à s'organiser personnellement et professionnellement pour y être présent. C'est exactement pour ça que de nombreux évènements intègrent des concert dans les périodes de creux (en amont, mi-temps, en aval). Évidemment que l'Event à Madrid n'est pas vide mais c'est l'image qu'il aura auprès de certains fans qui auront seulement vu quelques clips passer sur Twitter.

Love the idea of a comic book covering the history of an esports org. More brands should release things like that. Too bad it’s only available in French for now... @TeamVitality @Vitality_Neo @nicolas_maurer_ please make an English version happen. 🙏

@TeamVitality @EditionMarabout @Hachette_France @TeamVitality any chance this will also be published in English? 😵‍💫

DÉCOUVREZ NOTRE ORIGIN STORY Les précommandes de notre BD, à paraître le 10 juin, commencent aujourd'hui !

Streaming and content creation is competitive. That is what you seem to find hard to understand and/or accept. You compete with countless other creators for people’s attention. Discoverability on Twitch and Kick is bad, but as I pointed out before, there are many tools creators can use to get discovered: TikTok, Instagram, X, Reddit, actively arranging cross-promotions with other streamers, co-streams, etc. Show me the streamer who is truly entertaining, has a proper setup, streams consistently for many hours at least five days a week, creates high-quality content for other platforms as well, and still sits at 5 CCV after doing this for five years. You won’t find that. The issue is that many people think simply turning on their stream and playing games should be enough to get discovered. If you just want to stream for fun, then do it and enjoy it without worrying about numbers. But if you want to become successful, you need to put in the extra effort to stand out among millions of hours of content every day. It’s no different from any other highly competitive career path, such as professional sports.

Not once did I ever complain about it on a personal level. Frankly I think your tone is extremely Unprofessional maybe from too many years in E-sports in a competitive atmosphere. I am just saying as a whole across the board there needs to be better discoverability for ALL STREAMERS no matter the size of there community. Not just the ones that can fill your pocket.

genuinely how do you not get discouraged from numbers, i turn off my viewer count but for some reason I always just check and when i do im disappointed, how do you not let it affect you?

Tapping in on the Twitch viewbotting discussion as an actual agency brand advertising executive. This Twitch post is unlikely to convince any advertisers or streamers that the issue is improving. Here's how to actually address this problem - Viewbotting is an engineering and incentives problem disguised as a cultural one. There is no solution to this problem that can ever be achieved via culture change or moderation. People are debating the efficacy of the solution in Twitch’s post when the entire implementation isn’t even relevant. Given Twitch’s track record, no one should believe Twitch will enforce this “viewer cap” change appropriately even if they did have the proper backend data (and I think they don’t.) They won’t even enforce against popular streamers who have viewbotting programs visible on their screen, streamers who roleplay bringing slaves on their broadcasts and feed them treats, or broadcasters who advocate blatent political violence, and so on. Many streamers are on their 8th or 9th temporary bans for various TOS-breaking content. No one believes Twitch's intervention via moderation will change anything. So again it’s a matter of engineering and incentives. I’ll break down each one. But first a productive question to ask. Why does Youtube Live - which now eclipses Twitch’s live viewership by 40% - have nearly no problems with bots and viewbotting? Well first the engineering problem. Viewbotting gets solved by better detection, pattern recognition, IVT analysis, device fingerprinting, IP patterns, watch-time anomalies, removing off-platform embedding, and other boring backend stuff. As Dan correctly noted, these are things you can’t be public about because they’ll quickly see counterplay from the viewbot services. You just have to lock in and fix it. Google has spent billions of dollars solving this because advertisers don’t like invalid traffic. Their IVT rate now sits at a healthy 11% or so, easily beating competing live services like Tiktok (24%) and Twitch (35%+.) Twitch hasn’t taken this problem seriously. I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Twitch, and no team member has ever communicated to me or any of the agencies I work with about their IVT rates accurately. On the contrary it often feels like they throw raw viewership numbers around in pitch decks and presentations as the REASON to go advertise there. That used to work, but money is getting smarter in digital. Brands correctly care about return on spend and engagement with real people rather than just the perception that there are viewers around. You need both bravery and expertise in engineering to make massive changes. Twitch actually has phenomenal engineers, many who were brought on by the former CEO to develop the world’s most advanced CDN (content delivery network) from 2015-2022 before Youtube Live recently surpassed it. But I’m not sure the company has the bravery to make real, necessary changes that many commentators on this post have noted must happen. Successfully “fixing” this would represent a 30-35% global drop in viewership for a website already perceived as ailing against its competitors. To solve the engineering side you just have to apply more of the above technical solutions and spend money and time. Communicate with advertisers, refund us in high IVT events, keep improving your CDN, etc. It’s not a moderation issue, it’s not a viewer cap issue, that’s crowd pandering and will fix nothing. Both advertisers and the community begged for years for attention on this topic, while viewbotters bled us all and collected millions of dollars. Twitch has eroded trust and should just stop making these posts to the public. Users have lost tolerance for the platform and just need to see the actual changes. The second problem is the incentive problem. Every system to succeed on Twitch is set up based on the number of viewers you have. The entire Partnership/Affiliate pipeline is viewership based. The entire discovery funnel is viewership based. Sponsorships are calculated on CCV per $. And the entire culture of the website is “more viewers = better.” So of course everyone will do anything possible to get more viewers. This not only encourages viewerbotting but also toxic streamer culture (IRL nuisance streamers, etc) because, again, it’s all about the views. On Youtube Live monetization rewards sustained engagement and overall channel performance. Ads, super chats, channel memberships, etc. Discovery is pushed by an interest-based recommendation algorithm. Viewers will find you because of interest alignment - not because you have the most viewers. Barely anyone viewbots there because there’s no point. Adding viewers won’t help your channel, and Google’s AI/ML will instantly and automatically suppress your channel and shut off your ads. It is frustrating that the C-Level over at Twitch keep posting about viewbotting as if it’s going to get solved by human moderation. As if Twitch is going to magically have an amazing enforcement team with “the data” that goes after the serial offenders and returns everything to normalcy. This is all solvable, even from where Twitch is now. But you have to make the investments on the engineering/CDN side and just get to work. Everyone is waiting and hoping for these changes. Twitch’s viewbotting epidemic is a downstream effect of what every major streamer and industry professional told them would happen for years. They didn’t implement discovery engines, they didn’t change the incentive systems, they didn’t invest aggressively against obvious botting cases, and they didn’t communicate. Now they have an existential advertising and creator crisis. You reap what you sow.

So you’re telling me you genuinely can’t think of a reason why a game developer, especially of a highly anticipated game that cost them hundreds of millions to make, would rather give a free key to a streamer with 50 CCV instead of someone with 5 CCV? If you’re a bad writer, nobody buys your books. If you’re the worst football player on earth, nobody offers you a contract. So why should people support lazy, boring streamers with almost no viewers? Stop complaining and work your way up.

Okay Michael since think small time creators should be able to afford the game themselves then work towards something as a reward. We will go back to @lurkit_gg as an example again. They have a creators program for Dune let's say and they require a 25 or 40 ccv. Someone with that high ccv should also be able to afford the game more so then someone with say a 5 ccv. My whole point is the top 1% are the ones always just handed stuff in hopes they would promote products. offer stuff to people who believe in the product or could use the product. Much like Indie devs will often appreciate a creator more then a AAA title.

It honestly baffles me that the principle of truly earning something seems so strange to you. Why would someone give away their games, or anything else, for free just because somebody streams it on Twitch? That alone is neither an accomplishment that should automatically earn rewards, nor does it provide any real value to a sponsor if the streamer can't provide exposure. At the same time, you frame the whole system as if it were completely rigged and as if even the most dedicated and talented creators simply can’t make it. I strongly disagree with that. I’ve reviewed hundreds of creators over the years, and there were always clear reasons why they hadn’t succeeded yet or likely never would. And since I assume you also apply these complaints to your own situation and believe external factors are holding you back, I briefly looked at your profiles. Honestly, there are many things you would need to improve before even thinking about monetization. Just a few major points, in no particular order: 1.) You are not consistent. You regularly take breaks from streaming for up to a week, and your YouTube and TikTok profiles are mostly inactive as well. 2.) The quality of your content is too low. If you seriously want to make it as a creator, why not put more effort into producing proper YouTube and TikTok content instead of relying on low-effort clips that are not particularly entertaining? 3.) Even basic things are not working properly. For example, your Linktree contains broken links to YouTube and what seems to be an old X account. You can’t expect others to support your work if you are not fully committed to providing value yourself.

You may want to also look at my game library in Steam. I have even kick started a dew programs that was a waste of money and totally flopped. Like WWO - Wild West Online, or Dead Matter. Then let us factor in projects that you can pay a supporter rate and get 2 weeks early or so like Diablo IV. That I do not even play only played for the extra time and just lost interest because others stopped playing. I am not speaking for myself only. When I pick up the good fight for change. I am doing this for ALL CONTENT CREATORS. There has been plenty of great creators that got chewed up and spit out because let's face it DISCOVERY SUCKS.

@EntropyGaming Banger lineup. 🔥 Welcome! 👏

With strong runs to the finals of both the Parken Challenger Championship LAN in Copenhagen and the Fragster Challenger Masters, they’ve already shown what they’re capable of. And the next big events are right around the corner! 🏆 That’s why we’re thrilled to officially welcome these talented players as permanent reinforcements to our Entropy x Teufel CS2 division to support mikanix and tevsii for the upcoming international challenges ahead. Additionally, we’re happy to announce the launch of our new social media profiles dedicated to our CS2 division. Make sure to follow @EntropyCS2 so you don’t miss any updates on the boys! Welcome, team! 👏 🇩🇪 @mikanixgg 🇧🇬 @OFFICIALGeGo 🇸🇪 @dottiecs2 🇸🇪 @TevsiiCS 🇸🇪 @flaw_ns1 #unbreakable

Starting with content creation and working your way up is not mainly about getting sponsorships as early as possible. If you can afford the hardware to create content, there are most likely also ways to pay for a game key yourself. Strategically, that might even be the better option instead of only playing what you can get for free.

Who can you say that, Zach? When their are 3rd party Sites or Sponsorships that require you to hit a certain CCV to even be considered. See this is the PROBLEM with streaming. Everyone says do not care about the numbers all the while asking for your numbers to help you meet your dreams / goals, example - @lurkit_gg the better games require you to have 1000 YT followers or 20+ CCV.

@LastFreeNation @YamatoMebdi @Thorin Quality intro 😁

The latest edition of Summoning Insight is streaming everywhere now! @YamatoMebdi and @Thorin discuss why Fnatic are the Manchester United of the LEC, an emerging dark horse in the LCS, HLE's potential to be the best team in the world, and much more. Full episode links below!

$1 billion valuation for an esports team? T1 is going for it. But their biggest strength might also be their biggest risk. In a recent media session ahead of the 2026 Esports World Cup, @T1's chief operating officer Josh Woongki Ahn made a very interesting statement about esports club valuations. While stating that the Korean powerhouse currently values itself at around $200 million, he also set the ambitious goal of reaching "a corporate valuation of one billion dollars". To put that in context: That would place them roughly in the upper mid-table of the most valuable Premier League clubs. So how realistic is that goal? Let’s break it down. First, the pros. ✔️ They just recently reported strong 2025 financial results, with ~$60M in revenue (up 80% compared to 2024) and ~$1.6M in operating profit, marking the first net profit year in the organization’s history. ✔️ They have built a loyal fanbase that actually buys their products (80% of their revenue comes from product sales, including jerseys and merchandise). ✔️ They dominate League of Legends, with three consecutive World Championships in the last three years. And the best part: They still have massive growth potential, for example by expanding into new titles like Counter-Strike or entering new regions outside of Korea. Now the cons. ❌ Esports is still a volatile business. We’ve seen Forbes valuing Team SoloMid at $540 Million in 2022, and we all know how that story ended – even if that number always had to be taken with a big grain of salt. Today, after losing its title sponsor FTX, @TSM is worth just a fraction of that. ❌ Top esports teams profit heavily from money flowing into the ecosystem from the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF). While there are no signs they might pull out anytime soon, we’ve seen in other sports like golf that such funding isn’t guaranteed forever. ❌ But the biggest risk for stagnating or even dropping valuations is sitting right in front of them and is already a huge part of their business: @faker. The GOAT of League of Legends and shareholder of T1 is undoubtedly the most popular player and the biggest driver of sponsorships and product sales. He just turned 30, and esports careers usually don’t last much longer than that. Even the biggest stars often lose fan interest quickly once they stop playing and don’t successfully transition into content creation. If T1 loses its biggest star and stops winning one trophy after another, the goal of reaching a one-billion-dollar valuation becomes an even bigger challenge than it already is.

@ulfbard Schon mal was von einem "Hobby" gehört?

@targetdecker Ihr sucht Knechte und wie soll man von 5-10 Stunden leben?

Wir suchen erfolgshungrige Verstärkung in den Bereichen Management, Video Editing, Social Media und Marketing bei einer der führenden E-Sports-Organisationen in Deutschland. 5-10 Stunden pro Woche, freie Zeiteinteilung, leistungsabhängige Prämien. Bewirb dich jetzt!

@EntropyGaming @Benny_Schlotzi Check gerne mal deine DMs! 🙂

Starte jetzt im E-Sports durch! 🚀 Entropy Gaming gehört seit fast 10 Jahren zu den führenden E-Sports-Organisationen in Deutschland und hat unverändert große Ziele. Um diese gemeinsam zu erreichen, suchen wir tatkräftige Unterstützung in Counter-Strike 2, Rainbow Six, League of Legends, Rocket League und VALORANT. Egal ob Bereichsleitung, Social Media, Community Management, Video Editing, Events oder Marketing – wir suchen motivierte Leute, die Lust haben, gemeinsam mit uns etwas aufzubauen und weiterzuentwickeln. Das Beste: Alle Rollen sind flexibel, remote und mit ca. 5-10 Stunden pro Woche perfekt neben Job, Studium oder Schule machbar. Wenn du also wirklich etwas im E-Sports bewegen willst, dann zögere nicht und melde dich noch heute bei uns. Wir freuen uns, von dir zu hören! 👉 Alle offenen Positionen findest du hier: entropygaming.de/jobs/

On a new edition of The Four Horsemen, @MonteCristo and @Thorin lay out the historical context of co-streaming, trace the full arc of how esports co-streaming evolved, and share why Riot Games is to blame for many of the current problems. Streaming everywhere now, links below!

Im E-Sport durchstarten mit @EntropyGaming! 🚀 Ich freue mich sehr auf motivierte und erfolgshungrige Verstärkung in den Bereichen Management, Video Editing, Social Media und Marketing bei einer der führenden E-Sports-Organisationen in Deutschland. Wenn 5-10 Stunden pro Woche bei freier Zeiteinteilung für dich gut klingen und du wirklich etwas bewegen willst, dann melde dich jetzt! ➡️ entropygaming.de/jobs/