Falling Out of Love With Trovo

Trovo as a live streaming platform when it first started out was something that offered abilities that were very much the same as Twitch. You could stream your gameplay sessions to an audience that can watch and follow your channel. During the early days Trovo found an explosion of users when Mixer announced its shutdown, leaving many creators having to find a new home. At the time there were a few options besides Twitch. There was Facebook Gaming in which Mixer had struck a deal in swaying creators to its platform. Another choice was DLive but even during this time their audience was already dwindling due to many crypto shenanigans and management changes. YouTube was another option but the reach and culture of those already there were still feeling the effects of YouTube decision to kill off the YouTube Gaming app.

It was the period after the death of Mixer the platform made great strides in being a destination for many within the live streamer world. Garnering an audience from all over the world, South America, Russia, South Korea, Philippines, and the Middle East made the bulk of the viewership while North America was a minority of the viewership numbers. Something that was the opposite of Twitch. IT was also during this period that there was a growth of platform experiments. To bring in and retain viewers Trovo pushed out treasure boxes, a mechanic that allowed the streamer to offer incentives for viewers to come to their channels and stick around for a longer period. Unfortunately, this was abused causing strife within the community.

The hits continued as Trovo began to offer a partner program that rewarded the streamers with a higher audience and a more engaged community. So, we have those that were abusing the treasure box program being rewarded by the new Trovo 500 program, you can see at this point a growing wedge within the community. Botting and further gaming the system was bringing in record numbers of viewers and it was during this peak that Trovo had to make some hard decisions. They had to choose between pissing off the community or continue to pay out large amounts of money to those who were abusing the system. So, they chose to make drastic changes to the monetary system. Of course, the abusers and their fans were furious and as you could see within the graph, viewership fall, hard.

It was during the aftermath of this decision that began a series of events that Trovo continues to make. To make money as a platform is the number one priority just as any other company. Which leads to decisions that ultimately cater to larger channels with larger communities. Within Trovo as a creator you can level up your channel, meaning you can earn certain perks that offers transcoding to your viewers. This means your viewers can have the ability to watch your stream in different resolutions. Another perk gives you as the creator the ability to have longer VOD storage or to even provide you the ability to upload videos to your channels. There is now a system that pits streamers against each other in order to get their respective communities to spend money to get their streamer to win.

Add in yet another system to get a team or a group of streamers to compete for points within a team arena. All these gamification systems have made the aspect of streaming your content not a priority but, to find an avenue to get your viewers to spend as much money as possible within your channel. Trovo was smart as to get streamers to focus more on gaining money from their viewers, Trovo wins even more. They receive a percentage on each transaction and payouts to the streamer. There are so many gotcha mechanics within Trovo that it feels like you’re walking into a casino. You’re bombarded with elixirs, mana spells, pk arenas, predictions, team arenas, and so much more it can be hard to not be overwhelmed. Now this is not to say Trovo is a bad place to stream, its focus has become confusing to a viewer and to a creator. My only hope is that one day the powers that be over on Trovo can shift the focus back towards the creator and providing a better place to showcase one’s content.