Penny Arcade - Comic - Multi-Level Marketing

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Penny Arcade - Comic - Multi-Level Marketing

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

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Anon von Zilch

Tycho's thumbs make it look like the pyramid has a cute little face.

MaryAmelia

Is the last panel an intentional bit of irony?

ArmsForPeace84

Scummy, and an opening for competitors, who just got the bar for entry lowered by the release of Twitch's source code, to lure away any new streamers who able to instinctively grasp that they'll never be able to compete for viewers on a platform set up like this. But legal. And the practice, namely, "pay us more money to succeed on our platform", is unlikely to be targeted specifically in any Stomp On This Technology We Don't Understand Also Something About The Children Act.

The sector of the larger economy made up by literal MLM schemes, as opposed to this "compete to give us the most money for a storefront next to the entrance" model, has been surging for years. With little regulatory action and, not coincidentally, loads of institutional investors, business tycoons, and lawmakers deeply invested in their continued growth.

dennis

Source code leaks aren't a huge problem in terms of competitors, unless they are located in countries with no respect for IP laws. And even then, barriers to entry will limit their impact. Companies are just not going to take on the legal liability of starting your code based off of someone else's copyrighted work. If you're being hired by a company like this, their first question is going to be whether you've ever looked at any of that source code and if you say yes, that will be the end of it. If that's not enough, to be successful at being a streaming website, you want a bunch of programmers capable of building a streaming website on staff. Then they'll actually understand the code at a much deeper level than just grabbing someone else's code.

Besides, you'd be copying a site that most can agree is technically lagging. You'd build a better site from the ground up, like Mixer, so at least you could compete on features. Of course, Mixer showed that even that doesn't guarantee success. The hard part isn't building the website.

The leak of the source code is much more of a problem from a security standpoint, in that it allows hackers a lot more information on where to find vulnerabilities. Of course, open source often shows that even this isn't a golden ticket.

islington

MaryAmelia wrote: »

Is the last panel an intentional bit of irony?

Jerry has a long history of taking Mikes unintentional irony and making intentional.

I do like how Mike made the leaves look like they we're sitting on a bench in burning hell-scape, which I do suspect is entirely intentional.

Armored Chocobo

It's shit like this that makes me glad I don't make videos for popularity or a paycheck.

Showsni

Of course, if you wanted to spend a bunch of money boosting your own channel you can already just gift several thousand subs to yourself to the community. Don't even need a separate account!

V1m

I'm guess that this is theoretically aimed at streamers who don't want to go through the tedious process of assembling a community in order to hit that front page listing.

But they're probably kinda hoping that 'rival' streamer communities will vote for their guy to be the "top" streamer with their money.