Twitch & the Rise of eSports: A Brief History | Invision Game Community

Twitch is the world’s most popular streaming platform. As of January 2022, some of the most popular streamers, such as N3KOGLAI and XQCOW, have logged hundreds of hours of stream time, netted hundreds of millions of views, and seen upwards of three million hours watched from remote viewers. But once upon a time, Twitch.tv was a new project launched from 2007’s Justin.tv, a DIY streaming site. From 2011 to 2014, the first streamers to hit Twitch saw steady growth, which culminated in a 2014 recentering that would focus specifically on eSports (and, eventually, kneecopters from Mr. ChanChan). Twitch was the first platform that streamlined live gaming footage and started to offer remote gamers a chance to watch live competitions. At the time, eSports was in its earliest days; the majority of tournaments and teams were homegrown, with a market ecosystem that lacked any central bodies or organizing groups. But today, Twitch isn’t only one of the main platforms serving eSports fans. Instead, there’s a stream for just about any interest. Some of the first groups to latch onto the platform were others that benefitted from streaming live play, such as poker players. Originally, poker buffs who wanted to watch live play…
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