Twitch.tv Acquires Curse

Twitch Interactive, the gamingfocused streaming giant, has acquired Curse Incorporated. Whilemany in esports might be familiar with Curse due to their previouspartnership with Steve Arhancet’s TeamCurse, Curse has a longhistory of creating tools for gaming communities and has beenworking in the gaming industry since 2006.

Among Curse’s manyholdings include numerous gaming news sites, including Hearthpwn,MMO-Champion, Arena Junkies, Reign of Gaming, LoL Pro and manymore. Several of these sites have a focus or interest in theesports sphere of gaming, reporting on news and eventscorresponding to their respective games.

Curse also owned and operatedthe Gamepedia Network, a series of gaming encyclopedias with theirfocal point being the former Leaguepedia, a site dedicated tocollecting information about professional League ofLegends. Their general gaming division also includes numerousmodding communities and tools for gamers, such as CurseVoice.

Outside of their own holdings,Curse has historically sponsored numerous esports organizations inorder to advertise their Curse Voice platform. It will beinteresting to see how their sponsorship trends will change due toTwitch’s own endeavors in sponsoring variousteams.

This move to acquire Curse fitsinto Twitch’s narrative of expanding their position andholdings in esports. Rising to the top due to the prominence ofesports and professional gamers streaming on their platform, sincebeing acquired by Amazon themselves, Twitch has grown considerably.In late 2014, Twitch purchased GoodGame Agency, an esportsorganization that owned both Evil Geniuses and Alliance, two of thebiggest names in esports. Twitch esports is constantly expanding,growing to be one of the biggest influences on the general esportscommunity.

This does raise many concernsand questions, however. Amazon and Twitch now own two professionalesports organizations; the platform that the majority oftournaments are streamed on, as well as several news outlets thatreport on the esports world. Could Twitch reach a point wherethey’ve become too big and have potentially too muchinfluence on esports? Hopefully, we never see a future where thisis possible.

There are many excitingpossibilities that stem from this purchase. Curse has always had afocus on creating tools that made things more convenient for gamersand the opportunities that come from the combination of theiringenuity with the Twitch platform are endless.

Do you think any big changeswill come from Twitch purchasing Curse? Let us know in the commentsbelow or tweet us @GAMURScom.
Patrick Cowley can becontacted on Twitter, @PtrckCowley.