3 substantial differences:
Case A: gift only 1 subscription in a limited stramer list;
Case B: gift 3 subscriptions to any OW streamer;
Case C: gift 3 subcriptions in a limited streamer list;
I think the criticism that a lot of people in the community is making is correct: they are however three subscriptions of names of people already extremely well known and established on Twitch, many of which are involved only in the number of daily visuals without having touched Ow for months or years.
it’s also okay for me that it’s an advertisement for the arrival of Ow2, but let’s realize how desperate this method is:
- a person who DOES NOT have the culture of giving money by watching others play, and is simply a collector or even a fan of starcraft (this skin is a crossover like those of Blizzcon) what will he do after noticing that the skin has been registered correctly on the account? it will never renew that subscription and streamer “support” is extremely transient. you don’t even need to see them to enter, donate and exit. the one who would NEVER donate money to see others play benefits from a discount on his very first gift subscription, but then why should he pay full price for the other two if streaming has never been interesting for him but only collecting? precisely because it is a transitory aid that would really be a support for small streamers rather than those who have enough fame to be selected by Blizzard.
- and streamers starting to play OW? they engage their audience (not necessarily the OW community) who had no idea how OW has changed and the game gets publicity, and (surprisingly) those visual streamers on their channel will still gain. then I don’t know if they have direct access to ow2, if not … good luck playing “queuewarth, the thrill of waiting for the start of a competitive match at high rank”
- the public fond of those particular streamers is not overall without an opinion. if many of these streamers have spontaneously stopped playing OW1 in the past because they have started to trust other franchises (apex and valorant, for example), seeing them return to OW because they were selected directly by Blizzard … is not exactly a Spontaneous advertising is actually designed directly to get money. the audience of those streamers might think they are hypocrites and unsubscribe, have you thought about it?
- check out the pages of these streamers: pro-gamer chair, a wide range of sponsorships, personal merchandising and excellent presence on social networks. the community manager’s statement that “streamers do not earn as people think” is not correct: they are almost all streamers who are on social media anyway, know how to expose themselves and know how to have contacts with large companies and earn from such contacts. this is demonstrated by the current collaboration with Blizzard who found and selected them. if anything, it is Blizzard itself that has enormous support in this event: to involve great streamers with many subscribers without a penny coming out of their pockets but rather the communities of these streamers pay for this advertisement. paradoxically … we finance the advertising of the game that should pay Blizzard to the content creator (the selected streamers).
in my opinion the most honest idea would have been both case A and case B, but we are instead in case C: 3 subscriptions redistributed to a list of selected streamers (not talking about the number of subscribers and ability to be highly active on social networks compared to to other twitch channels). in my opinion it had to be managed very differently, if there was a need to advertise when ow2 arrived.