There seems to be only a few names in circulation when it comes to video game streaming, but Trovo is happily bucking the trend and bringing quality service to this highly contested space. As a streaming platform itself, Trovo creates opportunities for its content creators and has been involved with numerous events and partnerships over the years.
The platform is often referred to as “Twitch streaming rival” and deservedly so. Fresh out of beta, Trovo has been able to amass a respectable base of followers and it has been involved in numerous projects, from sponsoring individual teams to pushing entire competitions. Today, we have a conversation with Allen Chan, Head of North American Operations for Trovo, who can tell us more about the past, present, and future of the platform.
Q: Can you tell us how Trovo was born and what motivated you to focus on streaming all available aspects of the video gaming and esports experience?
First and foremost, we wanted to build a platform specifically for the gaming community. While some other platforms cater to a wide range of streaming across vlogs, chatting, and gaming, we felt that our goal and priority focus should be to bring streaming back to its gaming roots and on putting the gamers first.
Trovo just exited beta, and from there we’ve helped build upon our platform by incorporating powerful suites of tools from leaders in the space such as StreamElements and worked with Challenger Mode in supporting PUBG MOBILE teams and its tournament series to further create and strengthen what we focus on: gaming and esports.
Q: Bloomberg and others have called you a challenger to Amazon’s Twitch. Can you tell us how your offer is similar and, more importantly, how it’s different?
With Twitch, the top streamers on that platform are in a very small percentile. This also goes for individuals who are middle to low tier. Trovo offers and has currently opened more slots in our Trovo 500 program, granting more streamers opportunities than they would have on any other platform. Discoverability is always at the heart of all our Creator Partnership Programs.
Trovo is opening up more Silver to Master level spots within the Trovo 500 program. You can still find a lot of the similar things that Twitch has on Trovo, however, we build and advance certain areas that we believe improve audience and community experience, like our community custom Chat Rooms.
Community members can interact through 24/7 custom Chat Rooms that stay active even when its linked channel is off-stream. Further building the community, the Team Feature allows gamers to find teammates to play together, while the Squad Feature enables up to six streamers to stream together with audio and video integration.
Q: What are Trovo’s strengths today?
We consider our strengths to be those same factors that separate us from our competitors, namely that we place complete emphasis on gamers and their community before anything else. We offer powerful content creation tools, through our recent partnership with StreamElements, and we can be adaptable on bitrate to suit each region.
For instance, in Latin America, a certain bitstream rate is preferred due to the bandwidth involved. We also offer our streamers and creators the option to be paid out at any time, which again sets us completely apart from almost any other platform today. In addition, we have a brand new group chat feature that allows multimedia files. Normally people can just send a text or emotes, however with the new feature we have removed the limits of live communication and interaction.
Q: Are you focused on specific geolocations, or do you want to expand your product globally? We understand that you launched in Brazil earlier this year.
Our aim is to bring the platform to a global audience. One thing that makes us different from other platforms is that we have local operations and support in English, Spanish, Greek, Portuguese, and Serbo-Croatia.
These countries are crucial in creating our vision of what Trovo is and the communities there have been great. We’ve seen significant growth in these countries.
Q: How is Trovo going to change now that you have exited the beta?
We are now more certain in the direction we are taking. We are growing our platform from simply being a live streaming platform to a genuine gamer community with features supporting all kinds of communications and live interactions, where people can discover new interests, connect with people, and ultimately find their community.
Q: What are some of the big developments we can expect from Trovo in 2022?
We have a bunch of plans for the future of Trovo and our community. We can’t divulge any of that detail right now, but we have some things planned that we believe will disrupt the industry of gaming and esports. We look forward to revealing something in the near future.
To find out more about Trovo, please visit https://trovo.live/.