Twitch Acquires Curse, Its Sites, Tools For Gamers, and Databases (venturebeat.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via VentureBeat: The Amazon-owned, game-streaming site Twitch has announced today that it has acquired Curse, a company that creates programs like voice clients, databases, and mod managers for PC games for some 30 million users. Twitch did not disclose how much they paid for Curse. VentureBeat reports: "Twitch has more than 100 million users a month, and it has helped to popularize new trends gaming like esports and the rise of influencers and personalities who create fanbases that watch them (and donate money to them) while they play. Curse has over 30 million users a month across its website, social media channels, and desktop applications. The company hosts popular websites for hit PC games like Hearthpwn for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft and MMO Champion for World of Warcraft. Outside of its site, Twitch hasn't made many services for gamers. It could use this acquisition to extend a reach into that field."

Comments

All about control and second party apps

[Woldscum]

This is a move at Discord, Raidcall and Teamspeak. Twitch will have its own now in the Curse app. Also Curse just took in all of FTB (Feed The Beast). Making it the largest modded Minecraft launcher hands down.

Re:All about control and second party apps

[Anonymous Coward]

TeamSpeak is so horrible under the hood that I have no sympathy if it dies away. I hosted a couple of TS servers for several years until I finally moved to Mumble. It's secure (cert-based auth/encryption), FOSS and the latencies are incredibly low. The GUI should get an overhaul soon, too.

Re:All about control and second party apps

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think they really care? Most people using those voice apps really have no preference from Discord, Ventrillo, Teamspeak to Mumble. It's whatever is being used on the server they're playing on or what their clan is using. Most Arma and Flightsim servers will be using Teamspeak, just simply because of all the milsim plugins there are for teamspeak. Discord only enjoyed popularity because of the ease of use and setting up a lobby (And no server hosing requirements) that doesn't get ddosed all day like Teamspeaks popular providers.

And Mumble seems to be very popular among the MMO crowd. So really, who cares? I usually have all of them installed because I have no idea what the server is going to require or what my friends want to use for the day.

I haven't figured out Discords motives yet, but the rest have their niche and don't care. They will be around for the next 10 years or more guaranteed and more than likely I'll be using all of the above still flipping around between all of them.

Re:All about control and second party apps

[Anonymous Coward]

I almost forgot: I like turtles.

Re:All about control and second party apps

[ProzacPatient]

I hosted a couple of TS servers for several years until I finally moved to Mumble.

For the longest time I had a difficult time getting my friends to switch to Mumble from Ventrilo a few years back but when I finally got them to switch they would never go back. What it was like before Mumble was awful because there were only a couple of proprietary Windows-only voice chat software with outrageous licensing fees for anything more than like 5 users.

Re: All about control and second party apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to that! Mumble servers are easy to set up and you can easily get free Let's Encrypt certs for the server too!

Re:All about control and second party apps

[Rakarra]

I hosted a couple of TS servers for several years until I finally moved to Mumble.

For the longest time I had a difficult time getting my friends to switch to Mumble from Ventrilo a few years back but when I finally got them to switch they would never go back.

I'm conflicted. Once it's installed, it works, but Mumble is a PAIN to set up because their audio wizards screw up a lot. Every time I get someone new into the raid, they have to download and set up mumble (few groups use it anymore, most people use TS or Ventrilo). It's almost always a pain in the ass because you have to debug why sound recording is not working even after going through all the damned steps. It's become a disincentive to inviting new people in because it's a frustrating experience for them, and a time-waster for us.

Curse(d)

[Anonymous Coward]

They just bought a shitty youtube MCN. Good luck with that.

Re: Curse(d)

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a code for a free month of Curse at some gaming convention a few years ago. I tried to figure out WTF Curse did and eventually gave up and never redeemed it.

Re: Curse(d)

[mfh]

If you use a game that has a lot of mods like World of Warcraft, Curse updates your mods when they release new patches and it's a pretty big hassle. However, if you run backdated mods then you can't necessarily configure Curse not to overwrite your old folders. It would have been pretty easy to write an ignore folder feature but Curse refused to bother when I was using it a long time ago.

Other than that, you pay a premium to have a nice forum avatar from what I can tell.

Re: Curse(d)

[Mashiki]

Well curse had been cutting back on everything for years. It wasn't that long ago that they gutted their forums, then canned everything. And they bought out one of the old wow addon developer sites years ago, then promptly shuttered it(mainly the forums) and forced everyone to their new forums. I haven't played wow in shit 7 years? So I have no idea where mod authors and users even go to write or discuss stuff now outside of Elitist Jerks or Method. Then again, the devs gutted the piss out of most of the classes(skills and abilities) to the point where those of us who were hardcore nuts simply flung up our hands and said fuck it.

Re: Curse(d)

[mfh]

I quit when pandas started roaming Azeroth. What was Bliz even thinking?

But after that I went to a private server to try older expansions and it was a lot of fun at first but the experience became altogether corrosive.

These days I really enjoy Path of Exile, but it would have no use for Curse apart from the wiki for reading content about the game.

Having a company thrive from curating game information frees up game developers to put their time in the game itself and leave the understanding of mechanics to a third party.

This is a double edged sword I think. It would be better for games companies to do it themselves, however the promotion of the game then also gets spearheaded by the third parties to drive their interests further.

Will Curse Relocate?

[joelsherrill]

Just curious if Curse will be left here in Huntsville. Curse's website sends you to Twitch which has no info.

Re:Will Curse Relocate?

[magamiako1]

Highly doubt it.

Curse opened an office in Irvine recently (past year or so) which I suspected at the time was a move to court someone in California into buying Curse. I called back when they announced the opening of the office, amusingly (I've got friends that work at Curse and also at other local game companies in that region). Why they needed to open an office there for this, I'm not sure; but I suspected it due to the proximity of Blizzard & Riot Games.

I suspect if anything it's possible that Twitch will continue to allow Curse to operate semi independently. The standard folks to leave will likely be out of jobs here soon. Typical back office IT, HR, all of the Overhead stuff. Likely all pulled into the Twitch realm. Or not. It really depends. If they start making too many changes too early a lot of the Curse staff might bail and all of the knowledge will leave.

Re:Will Curse Relocate?

[internerdj]

That would be too bad. Huntsville leans pretty heavy on government services for its economy. It is nice to see the engineering talent attract other industries and pretty vital for long term growth.

Re:Will Curse Relocate?

[Anonymous Coward]

They've stated they are keeping the Huntsville office for the media team.

Amazon, Google, Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

If they are now owned by Twitch that means they are owned by Amazon. This is a move to acquire the curse VOIP program for Amazon in an effort to compete with Discord. Since it's now a Twitch product expect heavy Twitch integration and no YouTube streaming integration. This is a move against Microsoft and Google by Amazon. There is certainly some alphabet soup that comes with this move. Something to keep in mind... curse and discord are free which means everything you say or type is the product being sold to 3rd parties.

The curse network is a group of many sites most of which are Minecraft related.

Serious spin!

[Gravis Zero]

The truth of the matter is that Twitch pissed off a gypsy and has now been cursed. Now the users on Twitch are so annoying that it will make your eyes bleed. THE CURSE IS REAL!

N/T

[Merk42]

What a horrible night to have a Curse.

Hmm

[TFlan91]

Will they remove all the malware and virus associated with Curse's "products"?

I don't use their add-on managers for just that reason

Never liked them

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never trusted Curse. Every time some community uses their crap, it immediately goes downhill in every single aspect. Page size bloat, new mods showing up out of nowhere, massive influx of idiots, that sets off every alarm bell I have. I wouldn't be surprised if they were buying up large communities purely to harvest emails and passwords.

When any community I was involved in even glanced in their direction, I systematically deleted everything, turned my email and password into garbage, and actively got myself permabanned. Paranoid, yes, but like I said, I do not trust Curse.