Blizzard Announces Stream Awards for Twitch Streamers, $45k In Prizes

[MarlaDesat]

Blizzard Announces Stream Awards for Twitch Streamers, $45k In Prizes

The 2013 Blizzard Stream Awards will recognize Twitch streamers in 14 different categories for the best Blizzard content in 2013.

Twitch [http://www.twitch.tv/] community sites today, January 30. Community voting will begin February 5, and award winners will be announced on February 7.

To be eligible for the awards, you must have streamed content from one of four Blizzard games (Diablo III, Hearthstone, StarCraft II, and World of Warcraft) between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2013. You must also be a partner program [http://www.twitch.tv/p/partners] available to Twitch streamers who broadcast regularly, have over 500 average viewers, and apply for the program.

The seven data driven award categories have not been announced, but will be based on quantitative metrics like total numbers of hours streamed in 2013. The seven community voted award categories are:

Favorite New Streamer of 2013
Best Community Channel of 2013
Most Educational Stream
Favorite StarCraft II Stream
Favorite Diablo III Stream
Favorite Hearthstone Stream
Favorite WoW Stream

After voting has closed on these categories, Blizzard and Twitch will announce the winners and runner-ups for all 14 awards.

This isn't the first thing Blizzard has done to recognize Twitch streamers who play Blizzard games. The Hearthstone invitational tournament at BlizzCon 2013 brought eight players who regularly streamed the game together to compete for the title of "Grandmaster of the Hearth". The $45,000 prize pool takes the 2013 Blizzard Stream Awards up a notch. Personally, I think it's a pretty great way to thank the Twitch community.

Source: Blizzard [http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/12695234/blizzard-stream-awards-powered-by-twitch-1-30-2014]

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[Clive Howlitzer]

No love for people streaming Starcraft: Brood War!?

 

[MarlaDesat]

No love for people streaming Starcraft: Brood War!?

No love for Dragoons and no love for Lurkers, I'm afraid.

 

[Weaver]

So you already have to be making money off twitch to make more money off this.
I realize this is basically an insidious way for Blizzard to entice popular streamers into streaming more Blizzard content, so of course they aren't extending the offer to no-namers. It's really my jealousy talking. I just wish I could get some kind of break. Maybe it's time to just give up.

 

[Charli]

Oh good they're at least paying their free advertisement (a fraction of what official marketing would cost but hey, it's completely different from the alternative) instead of penalizing people for it like other jerkwad devs.

I never know what people have against Blizzard, they are fairly standupish and usually good natured even when Big Daddy Activision is breathing down their neck to do otherwise and even their worst decisions they usually go: 'yeah y'know, we'll rethink this later, thanks for the feedback'.

Guess it's just one of the stigmas of running World of Warcraft. You must be the devil, doesn't make sense otherwise.

 

[PcaKes]

I follow a TON of SC2, and I think they've really missed the boat with some of these nominations, at least in the Starcraft categories. Jaedong and Innovation barely stream at all, State of the Game and Meta haven't been on very often at all, and there are a few players and people who are deserving of nominations who aren't there. I know this is for twitch partners, but I'm pretty sure there are partners who deserve spots.

That said, this isn't a bad thing. Cheers Blizz.

 

[Gali]

No love for people streaming Starcraft: Brood War!?

To my knowledge, the most popular BW streams are just Afreeca("Korean Twitch")-restreams (managed by snipealot and Teamliquid) of the remaining Korean BW pros and the few tournaments that are going on there. There isnt much else worth watching as far as I know.

And besides, Blizzard never really loved BW anyway. Otherwise they wouldnt have forced its most successful pro scene (South Korea) to play SC2. But its getting more attention lately since many old BW legends (like Bisu and Yellow) returned and additional tournaments are popping up (even GOMTV, who are broadcasting Koreas main individual SC2 league, planed a BW tourny this year).

Aaaand no WC3 too btw.

Anyway, I only know the SC2 guys in the new streamer section. I hope Jaedongs taking it. Best community channel and most educational would fit both Day9 and Artosis. But I favor Day9 since he does way more stuff than Arty. Fav SC2 stream? Destiny will get it, but I prefer Idra because.. rage.

 

[shintakie10]

I follow a TON of SC2, and I think they've really missed the boat with some of these nominations, at least in the Starcraft categories. Jaedong and Innovation barely stream at all, State of the Game and Meta haven't been on very often at all, and there are a few players and people who are deserving of nominations who aren't there. I know this is for twitch partners, but I'm pretty sure there are partners who deserve spots.

That said, this isn't a bad thing. Cheers Blizz.

There's a pretty big stink about this whole thing in the Twitch community actually since a lot of the nominations make fuck all sense. People aren't really sure if it was Blizzard's doing or Twitch themselves (signs so far point more towards Twitch), but there are a lot of ruffled feathers.

All that said, still a huge fan of this idea moving forward.