Hitbox was a

live-streaming Livestreaming, live-streaming, or live streaming is the streaming of video or audio in real time or near real time. While often referred to simply as ''streaming'', the real-time nature of livestreaming differentiates it from other non- live ...

esports Esports (), short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, played individually or as teams. ...

video game website launched in October 2013. It was a competitor to

Twitch Twitch may refer to: Biology * Muscle contraction ** Convulsion, rapid and repeated muscle contraction and relaxation ** Fasciculation, a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction ** Myoclonic twitch, a jerk usually caused by sudden muscle c ...

. It was acquired by

Azubu Azubu was a live streaming esports website. In May 2017, it shut down and was succeeded by Smashcast. History Azubu was founded in 2012 when Lars Windhorst noticed that children were using live streaming services to watch others play video g ...

, and then became

Smashcast Smashcast was a live streaming platform that materialised after the merger of Azubu and Hitbox in May 2017. History Azubu's acquisition of Hitbox was announced in January 2017. At the time, they announced they were "launch a new platform, ...

History

In November 2015

SeedInvest SeedInvest is an equity crowdfunding platform that connects startups with investors online. The company was founded in 2012 and launched in 2013. SeedInvest has focused on building liquidity in the platform by attracting high-net-worth individu ...

, along with

Wargaming A normal wargame is a strategy game in which two or more players command opposing armed forces in a simulation of an armed conflict. Wargaming may be played for recreation, to train military officers in the art of strategic thinking, or to st ...

and North Base Media, funded Hitbox with investing $4,000,000

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introduced the U.S. dollar at par with the Spanish silver dollar, divided it int ...

. CEO and co-founder Martin Klimscha was interviewed about Hitbox. He stated that their "goal at the moment is to build a superior live streaming platform", therefore taking on

. He also stated that they wanted to improve the game streaming service by reducing latency. He said that Hitbox was to be more than the "streamer and the chatbox", and would "build interactivity into this live streaming experience. Twitch's CEO

Emmett Shear Emmett Shear (born 1983) is an American Internet entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded the live video platform Justin.tv. Shear became the chief executive officer of Twitch (service), Twitch when it was spun off from Justin.tv, a position he ...

held an Ask me Anything (AMA) on

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

in which he mentioned that Twitch would be implementing "muting of archived streams playing music that was not licensed in previously recorded Video On Demand". He said that Twitch would be "scanning for 'ambient music' being played in the background by streamers". Hitbox hoped to capitalize on this by not being as strict on

video on demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos, television shows and films Digital distribution, digitally on request. These multimedia are accessed without a traditional video playback device and a typica ...

. In April 2016, Hitbox signed a two-year contract with ESL gaming, Dreamhack, and Wargaming. ESL and Wargaming only exclusively partnered with Twitch in the past. "Hitbox does offer revenue-share for non-partners and their service is slightly more South-African friendly." Hitbox partnered with broadcasting company Nav-TV in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

. A third party has released an app for the company on the

Windows App Store The Microsoft Store (formerly known as the Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It was created as an app store for Windows 8 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps. With W ...

. There is also an app for

Android Android most commonly refers to: *Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), a mobile operating system primarily developed by Google * Android TV, a operating system developed ...

as well as

IOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

. Hitbox planned to offer a 60 FPS,

4K resolution 4K resolution refers to a horizontal display resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels. Digital television and digital cinematography commonly use several different 4K resolutions. In television and consumer media, 38402160 (4K UHD) with a 16:9 asp ...

streaming service in late 2016. but this plan was canned with its merger and shutdown. Hitbox had about 6 million

monthly active users Active users is a software performance metric that is commonly used to measure the level of engagement for a particular software product or object, by quantifying the number of active interactions from users or visitors within a relevant range ...

in its later months. They transitioned into using an

HTML video HTML video is a subject of the HTML specification as the standard way of playing video via the web. Introduced in HTML5, it is designed to partially replace the object element and the previous de facto standard of using the proprietary Adobe Fla ...

player instead of a Flash Video player. In November 2016, WarGaming, among other investors, invested 4 million US dollars into Hitbox. On January 10, 2017, Hitbox announced through their blog that they were being acquired by

. On May 5, 2017, Hitbox shut down and their website was redirected to

, a new

Live-stream Livestreaming, live-streaming, or live streaming is the streaming of video or audio in real time or near real time. While often referred to simply as ''streaming'', the real-time nature of livestreaming differentiates it from other non-live ...

service, which they claim is "spiced up with a new design & features and managed by a team consisting of Hitbox and Azubu staff".

References

{{Internet streaming services Video game websites Video game streaming services Former video hosting services Entertainment companies established in 2013 Internet properties established in 2013 Internet properties disestablished in 2017 Mass media companies established in 2013 Software companies established in 2013