https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/a171ff7e-7c2a-49b3-ad84-ce54517e05cd/001_-_medal_animation_video.mp4
Hello Creators, Pim here, CEO of Medal. This week, we completed the acquisition of Rawa.tv. A game live-streaming platform from the Middle East, along with their incredible team, and community of live content creators.
https://medal-insider.simplecast.com/episodes/medaltv-has-acquired-rawatv-live-content-is-coming-to-medal
Read the blog post below, or listen to the audio recording above.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/ZvtBrPrKESdFsHMeo2KmQmHVu6aAv1MJlFUQVFUdM6Nz7IbHUeoeJK9taQm_s3jzFQSFAgGEYbDkyA43Z4M9JpeMfvT2MbT8jhrAz4Kx7U0SlB4qUyHrcFo1vb8ckJSaFMXIlZ2O
You're probably expecting a corporate announcement that explains how many zeros we paid for Rawa, and why the future of live streaming is bright. This will not be that type of post. I’m going to run you through my experience as a creator, and how we’re going to deliver live content for games on Medal better than anyone else has ever done it — built from the ground up, with radical honesty and transparency. I like to treat the creators on our platform as colleagues. You’re all educated enough on the industry to get the reasoning behind decisions.
As a kid, I started a YouTube channel called ZurielsCreed. For years, I woke up early every morning to make videos before school. I made RuneScape videos and worked my way up to 42k subs. One day, I woke up and that channel was terminated. I didn’t have any money to pay lawyers to fight it. I barely understood what DMCA really was. All I was left with was the message pictured - and a part of my life taken away from me overnight.
You see, the reason that I couldn’t get anybody to treat me like a human is exactly the reason we feel so alienated on big platforms that try to cater to everyone and own everything. They become too big to focus well on one specific niche — games, and this is a big reason why I’m so excited to be running Medal today.
We get to become the do-over, and learn from what’s been done. We get to build the platform creators in gaming deserve (cliché, I know). The impact of this can not be understated, if done well. The approach has to be different —unlocking new ways to monetize your content when you put all of your focus on games, which means a better experience for Creators and Viewers alike.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/qoehmMTdRhPqKsxm65CWTX_k1NQuYIhK7E17Qk0-nhfI7LTZGrTmP-iki9IwuScoa3o-pE7U63tuVQ5FdH1gHIlfVfnzTOdM8YW3y7r-T4VQ5ZbvUsBxg4k0TeUoqmSpdzgANB1O
Our approach to live content will be based on the following principles:
This means that we will roll out the affiliate and partner programs the same way we would build a team in our company. very slowly and with the right people. These people will be a diverse, exemplary, and highly skilled group, with high amounts of existing followers on Medal.
As we scale, this becomes harder. But as we prove out the model, it is critical. Over time we will undoubtedly be faced with decisions that affect creators. We’ll treat them with the same transparency that you’re used to seeing from us.
Everyone will be able to stream freely to Rawa and build up followers for the time being, and you will see us add the ability to go live to your friends from Medal shortly. For now you’ll just use the live tools you’re used to, like OBS or SLOBS.
The Medal integration will only be available to a select group of people initially, who we work with closely to design the right platform for creators. If you want to be part of this initial group, please apply to the Skilled Player Program (#skilled-application) in our discord.
If you are a bigger streamer reading this, do not move your audience over to Rawa just yet — we recommend you just make a Medal account and start posting clips. Your followers will transfer over to Live followers when we launch this to more people. We can’t make you happy right now. And I don’t want to set the wrong expectations. For now, Rawa is for existing Medal users who just want to have fun and stream to their friends, and streamers who want to build up a following in a new and exciting platform before it has mature offerings, but have little to lose in doing so.
We have no intention of building a general-purpose Live-streaming platform for the masses, where the majority of viewers don’t pay. While Rawa will continue to operate, Live Content on Medal will be focused on building the perfect experience into your existing Medal experience — discovered through short form video. We only succeed if our algorithm is great at matching viewers on Medal exactly with the content they love to pay for. If there are 100 people who would check out your channel and leave, and 10 who would subscribe, we'll focus on referring the 10 who will subscribe with our content algorithm. Expect highly targeted groups of users to find your content. And if they start paying you, we all win. This is a win-win: We spend less money streaming video to users who don’t pay, and you’ll spend more time with people who will.
We refuse to operate in a way that isn’t sustainable for the business or our creators, and we’ll be radically transparent in the process, because let’s face it — the pie is big enough for us (the platform) and you (the creator) to both be phenomenally happy with the outcome. The last thing we want to do is make a large group of creators dependent on income from a platform that isn’t sustainable.
For now, you are welcome to build up a following on Rawa. We will transfer over those followers once it is fully integrated with Medal.
We won’t try to cater to everyone. Medal is the place you come to watch and create gaming content. This means we will likely be more strict than other platforms around any type of content that does not directly relate to games. It’s a slippery slope to do otherwise.
****Buying your ticket into this space doesn’t work. There has to be a natural organic match between viewers and creators. I strongly believe in paying creators what they are worth. But I don’t believe in the strategy that buying creators brings in their audiences. Millions of people watch videos on Medal every month already. We don’t need to buy eyeballs.