It seemed inevitable, but the day has finally come: Justin.tv, the life-streaming service that birthed (and was quickly overshadowed by) the game broadcasting service Twitch, has closed its doors.
From here on out, their focus is solely on Twitch.
At one point, Twitch was but a video category on Justin.tv, meant to allow Justin.tv users to stream themselves playing video games.
Eventually realizing that this one category was finding more viewers than all of their other categories combined, they spun Twitch into a service of its own in 2011. By 2014, Twitch had grown so large that the entire company was renamed as “Twitch Interactive.”
In May, word got out that Google/YouTube were looking to buy Twitch for as much as a billion dollars. As of late July, those talks were said to be either complete or nearing an end; so far, none of the companies involved have made any official announcement.
While the site is already shuttered, users are being given a month to transfer their Justin.tv accounts over to Twitch if they want to keep their usernames.
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Says the company in an official statement:
Justin.tv pioneered live video on the Internet and spawned one of the largest video platforms ever: Twitch. Justin.tv was officially renamed Twitch Interactive Inc. in February of 2014 and Twitch is now the focus of the company’s resources. Unfortunately that means we need to shut down Justin.tv. We thank all of our broadcasters and viewers for 7 years of live video memories.
