The streaming giant has announced that Twitch video resolution will be limited to 720p in South Korea. The update was posted on the official Twitch Korea blog explaining that "the cost of operating Twitch services in South Korea continues to rise and this is likely to continue for the foreseeable future." This means that streams will no longer be shown in 1080p for users in the country, although streams with transcoding enabled will still have a choice of lower resolutions.
questionable post also explains that Twitch initially tested peer-to-peer technology for sharing native resolution streams during July and August 2022, but determined that while "this is currently a viable solution for many service providers, it needs to be more thoroughly explored before it will become widespread. implementation." As such, Twitch streams in the country will be capped at a maximum resolution of 720p starting September 30th.
Professional esports commentator Wolf Schroeder who lives in Korea and commentates for Riot Games League of Legends after working on StarCraft II, Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch League. explains that the shift follows the introduction of new Korean Internet regulation. Bandwidth costs previously paid by ISPs are now borne by streaming platforms including YouTube, Netflix and Twitch.
It is likely that other such providers may follow suit and replicate this change in their own services, or they may instead try to pass these increased costs on to users. Currently, this rule is only in effect in South Korea, but if it proves popular, it is possible that other countries will follow suit. Ookla, a Speedtest.net company, currently ranks South Korea as the fourth country in the world for average internet speed.
Twitch also recently introduced new Twitch gambling rules to the platform following a confusing gambling scam controversy that affected several well-known streamers. He also recently unveiled long-known changes to Twitch's affiliate deals that reduce the share of revenue offered to the platform's biggest names after the $100K revenue cap is passed.
