18/03/2023
A Message to Anyone Thinking Of Staying on Facebook Gaming - Twitch is better. Period! And if you do stream here on Facebook Gaming then You should know better…what you already might have thought about 🤔 might happen soon. Facebook Gaming is dying and will shut down. Details
**Facebook pays well, but here are the issues:**
-The Facebook algorithm.
-Copyright issues with simple things like music. Even “In game music” like the main title or riding a car in Fortnite
-Interactivity.
-The Interface (UI/UX).
-Accumulating viewers.
-Streamer "freedom."
-Lack of "streamer culture."
-Lack of support for level up members
-Notifications missing?
-Level up memberships being taken away for no reason 
**The Facebook Algorithm.**
If you've had a Facebook account since 2010 onward, you'll notice that the way people interact with the photos you post to it, and the posts that you have seen show up in your Facebook feed, have changed significantly. Remember those friends you kept in touch with over the years and you suddenly stopped seeing their photos and other posts? That is the algorithm at work. Ever since Facebook's incident with Cambridge Analytica, Facebook as a company has been pinching people for pennies. In 2014 to 2017 you'd have very viral content show up in front of you, videos, photos, text, you name it. From 2018 onward, this stopped because Facebook wanted to limit the strength of fake news posts, and to increase ad sales / boosted posts. Most importantly, this applies to streams as well. You could have a Facebook fanpage with 500,000 followers, but one person who works at Facebook could game the algorithm to your fanpage and stop you from reaching even 1% of those followers. Oh, and another problem is the way the algorithm notifies your followers that you went live. Instead of notifying everyone who follows your page immediately that you are live, it does this gradually over a "slow" process, and they may not even see the notification when you are actually live.
**Copyright issues with simple things like music.**
This would restrict you from playing a handful of games that focus on music - DDR, Osu, Beatmania, and other titles. There's also a ton of videos you can't watch on YouTube. More on this later.
**The Interface (UI/UX).**
If you just go to fb.gg, the problems are not immediately visible. A mindless (and I mean truly mindless) troll would probably tune in to your stream on their real facebook account, insult you (again, using their REAL Facebook account), and not give it two thoughts. The troll thus endangers himself, and anyone close to him (friends, family, roommates, etc.) it's even worse if the troll lists the city where he lives, because he is effectively doxxing himself. Self-endangering trolls aside, interacting with a streamer requires you to reveal your first and last name. I also noticed a lot of other streamers on the platform were just playing cell phone games, and often times you can't find any quality streamers. One forgiving quality is that streamers on this platform, like mixer, seem to have a lot of interactivity. Oh, and sharing videos. Why is it so difficult to share videos / streams by simply "clicking" on a URL / social media post. You have to click on the "time/date" of the social media post. This is not "noob friendly."
**Accumulating Viewers**
With the above paragraph in mind, **Accumulating viewers is much more difficult than on Twitch.** How? Your Facebook posts gain visibility by the number of interactions they get, **not by sharing the post.** Remember me talking about "interacting forces you to reveal your first and last name" above? Yeah. Less people interact as a result. Less interactions means less visibility on Facebook. OH! And let's not forget, the evolution of the *share button*. Inevitably, you have seen a funny picture or video and had the urge to click *share* beneath that piece of media on Facebook. Well, in 2019, that's not how the *share button* works. Clicking on *share* will only make that piece of media (photo / video / livestream) visible on your own timeline in 2019. This means if 100 followers share your stream, then their friends will not see it unless they go directly to the followers' timelines.
However, from the gamer perspective of accumulating viewers - It feels like, as a gamer, it is far too difficult to pull in viewers (even with established social media presence) unless you do what Ninja did and pull your viewers with you to a different platform. Or maybe if you win some massive gaming tournament and plug your Facebook Fanpage. If any championship gamer were to sign with Facebook, they would have a large viewerbase.
Oh, last, but not least on the topic of Accumulating viewers - some people started streaming on Facebook in 2017. If you can find someone who got big on Facebook streaming, and then go back to their viewership in 2017 and before then, the numbers will be much much higher per stream than 2018 until now. **Thus whoever it is at Facebook that determines the algorithm also determines whether or not you get viewers, and thus whether or not you get paid to stream games.** This makes you ask yourself, "Is this really a meritocracy? One person or a small group of people at a multibillion dollar company that I have never met decide whether or not I will be successful."
**Streamer Freedom -There is none, Facebook as a platform can interfere with your sponsorships and collabs.**
There are simple freedoms by signing with Facebook that you do not have. For example, you cannot use PNG or GIF files to display sponsor logos / logos of collaborating companies. You can still make social media posts promoting products / services of collaborating companies, but they must be separate from your stream. You can also still make appearances for other companies / collaborations, and you can make paid appearances on other streams and streaming platforms for things like ESL One or The International or LCS World Championships, or Blizzcon, or whatever. There's the music and copyright stuff I mentioned above, the games you cannot play on stream, etc. Additionally, you cannot just stream yourself going out with some friends to the bar or eating dinner outside. Whatever you are doing must be at least mildly gaming related. You want to engage in a long chit-chat with your viewers? You'll have to do that from the main menu of whatever game you play. Also, this is a big one, you cannot plug your other social media - YouTube and Twitter cannot be plugged while you are streaming.
**Lack of streamer culture.**
There's like no place where all streamers can get together and chit chat. There are various facebook groups for content creators to discuss ideas and concepts, but even those feel "weird." With Twitch you can check out a streamer's youtube channel if you missed anything while they were live. The entire atmosphere of Facebook Gaming almost feels "communist." I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook were to crank out some sort of VOIP program similar to discord specifically for gamers, and then allow you to use it on stream - but for now it's something they don't have.
That's basically all I wanted to say. If your a small time streamer….make content on TikTok and some YouTube Shorts. Get some traction and move that over to your streams. Twitch is more gamer friendly than Facebook. Also if your in this for the money then don’t even bother listening to any of the advice I just gave. You’re practically done ✅ or will stop streaming soon and with that I am done wasting my time streaming on Facebook Gaming.
