There were other services before twitch. Before it was shut down, Own3d tv provided a decent income for a few streamers.

The thing with Own3d was that for the most part its streaming service simply did not match that of Twitch. The layout and mobile support was a bit better (streams that used Own3d were far more convenient to access since they played from the browser), but the quality was lacking. Twitch, on the other hand, has focused on what matters: the stream quality. Now that there layout has been updated, they would have smoked own3d even more IMO.

Many streamers moved from Own3D to Twitch because Own3D was not making good on owed payments. Twitch needs competition to force it to improve its ToS, but it's been good for gaming.

Prior to the existence of Twitch there were at least a couple thousand people playing video games professionally. Most of these players played FPS, RTS, or MOBA (not that the term existed at the time) games competitively. I believe they still do, and that they are still not dependent on Twitch for their income.

It's my understanding that the income of top professional players in some segments (fighting games, for example) has largely shifted to non-prize sources in the past few years. Being a top player will get you sponsorships and notoriety which can be leveraged into other projects like online shows, consulting jobs, etc. Sponsorships at minimum include travel expenses, but often will pay for full-time living expenses.

Twitch is a not-insignificant part of it, along with youtube etc. The companies that sponsor players use the hype to get eyeballs on their own sponsors' ads.

I am sorry to admit I don't have any sources for this information. It's mostly hearsay, so take it with a grain of salt.

The point is that it existed before Twitch. It might even be argued that the switch you speak of occurred because of Twitch.

Don't forget that in the early days, there were professional gamers but live-streaming was unknown. Players made money by winning tournaments and getting sponsors. The article mentions that. There weren't zero options before twitch - own3d was already mentioned - and there are options besides live-streaming.

Are there any publications regarding how much money Twitch streamers make?

I imagine actual regular casters of top eSports, like LoL and SC2, are making much more money than some dude streaming World of Warcraft.

Towelliee makes around 7-8k/month according to an AMA he did a few month ago and it has quite a bit of insight there.

He's shown that you don't have to be top gamer skill wise to make a lot of money. He's decent at games, but he isn't any sort of 'Pro' at any sort of game he plays:

http://www.reddit.com/comments/tufo9/i_am_a_twitchtv_partner...

http://www.twitch.tv/towelliee

Destiny, who is a very controversial streamer, (and probably doesn't make this much anymore) said he made about 3.5k/month from streaming 1.5k for lessons. He was a pretty heavy streamer with lots of viewers. This was 2 years ago though so the numbers may have changed.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/g7q91/iam_destiny_i_qu...

He makes a lot more now, especially since he went to LoL and gets even more viewers. You can get somewhat of an idea as to how the system works from this post: http://www.destiny.gg/n/own3d-tv-a-beginners-guide-to-being-...

His contract with Twitch is NOT the same, of course, but it's similar, especially on value. These streamers also make money from donations, so keep that in mind. I've heard that some donations were as high as 10k, which is insane. Not all streamers get that much. I've also heard that one popular streamer showed his Paypal account on stream and had upwards of 90k. Speculation, I know, but I don't think it's far fetched. You can also go on certain streams and read off the donations that they post, add it up, and extrapolate to a month's salary. Just from donations!

The LoL streamers earn A LOT of money from streaming. A team may get 30K viewers PER MEMBER. TSM did this for a while. Their members would barely focus on team practice, they'd stream most of the day to upwards of 20k+ viewers. TSM also does an online invitational tournament which also gets a ton of viewers.

Simply put, the market is growing and a lot of that growth is coming from Twitch. They have a ton of power now and it's scary. Sure, if Twitch went away, e-Sports would still be around because that part of the industry is built around tournament and sponsorship money. What would happen, though, is a lot of people would lose their jobs and e-Sports would be destabilized for quite a while. Not that Twitch will go away suddenly, but they have way too much power and I would not be surprised if they started abusing it even more.

Twitch has an agenda now. Talk to any Admin and you'll know this. Their agenda is to appear professional. Thus, anything deemed unprofessional is going to get you in trouble. This means, essentially, that any non-gaming content is barred completely. Streamers will usually take breaks from their games (they play for 6+ hours in one sitting) by watching stuff on stream or just talking and relaxing with the viewers. This is NOT allowed, technically. Some streamers get away with it but I've seen others get reprimanded in the chat for not showing gaming content. It's only going to get worse.

At about that same time, members of Counter Logic Gaming were claiming to make 5-6k a month each streaming, and that they actually lost money going to tournaments and winning them, if they had just put in a normal amount of time streaming over those weekends.

Although winning tournaments might make their stream more popular?

In the short term, no- however, it does keep them relevant as time goes on. most of the reason they said they did it, was because they just couldn't be that interested in the game if not playing at that level.

Hard to know without (1) longitudinal data and (2) surveying samples of their viewers. Your idea is highly plausible, IMO, but only that.

Live streaming of games. Many people are making hundreds of thousands / millions of dollars without Twitch, using Youtube.