Twitch Will Shut Down Its Streaming Platform in South Korea
Twitch Will Shut Down Its Streaming Platform in South Korea
blog.twitch.tv
An Update on Twitch in Korea
49 comments
-
-
Damn I didn’t know it was 10x the cost. Crazy how a company that size still can’t handle the fees.
-
more a matter of “don’t wanna” than “can’t”
-
It says they operated at a loss in SK. If that's true, I wouldn't wanna, either.
-
I also didn’t know that South Korea charges extra for foreign content providers which is also pretty aggressive.
-
There's no "don't wanna" unless there's a "can't" due to not being able to make a profit. If they could they would. It's simple as that.
-
-
10x the cost of what tho? They just say "most other countries", but tahts just spin and essentially meaningless without more data
-
-
That is surprising forthcoming from them.
-
-
Are you trolling? Korea has a 97% literacy rate and is in the top 20 of best educated countries in the world.
-
49 comments
Does anyone know why it's so expensive there?
Lack of net neutrality is a huge part of it. Korean ISPs bill sites like twitch for the data they use.
This is good ammo for the fight for Net Neutrality, honestly.
IIRC, South Korea charges an import tax for foreign media. It’s part of why Korea has become a sort of media powerhouse, with K-pop, K-dramas, K-comics, etc… Those things are much cheaper in SK because they’re all local and aren’t being charged that extra tax. So they’re naturally very popular in SK because they’re much cheaper. Sort of a positive feedback loop where the media is cheaper so people consume more of it, which makes the media popular enough to survive on its own outside of Korea as well.
It's not about media or taxes, it's about inflated fees for traffic period. It's regulatory capture (which Korea has a long history of) and subsequent collusion by Korean ISPs. Prohibitively expensive to run a streaming service like that even if you have local datacenters to reduce international transit fees (because you still have to connect to the local ISPs who will still charge you). https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/08/17/afterword-korea-s-challenge-to-standard-internet-interconnection-model-pub-85166
Edit: To be clear, this sort of situation is about the only one where to effectively have a streaming service, you'd need to use peer to peer and make it "come from inside the house", so to speak. Even their local streaming services are over the barrel and only the ISPs themselves could actually make an affordable streaming service.
It's interesting that it's still classified as foreign media even if the streamers could be local. Wonder if there'll be a Korean twitch competitor that comes out of this.
SPNP - Sending Network Party Pays
The party that creates the traffic pays the operating costs.