Twitch is the dominant player in the live streaming market, but Chinese conglomerate Tencent appears to be preparing to take its place, as Bloomberg reports that the company has been "quietly testing" a mobile-focused It has been "quietly testing" a live streaming platform in the U.S. since at least March and is currently preparing for a $30 million partnership program that will launch in July.

Trovo is still in beta testing and is very small compared to Twitch. Call of Duty Mobile, the platform's largest game, currently has just 2,600 followers, and the entire Valorant category has fewer than 200 followers. The Trovo 500 partnership program spans five different categories It aims to boost this number by offering financial incentives to 500 streamers:

The following participation criteria and incentives are available:

"We understand how difficult it is to rebuild on an entirely new platform. " Trovo strongly believes that monetization opportunities should be provided to all streamers who are dedicated to making live streaming their career, and we are committed to supporting creators who support Trovo."

In addition, the top 20% in each of the five categories will receive bonuses based on their ranking and growth rate, and "creators who consistently rank high in the program may be invited to a special tier," Trovo said. The program may also be expanded in the future to incorporate more streamers, and multi-platform streaming will be allowed.

Trovo's website looks a lot like Twitch, and its ties to Tencent are modest; an examination of Trovo's API access agreement reveals that Section 21(a) states that "Trovo Service is offered by TLive LLC, an affiliate of Tencent Holdings Limited."

Bloomberg reports that Trovo's privacy policy is located at madcat.tv - Trovo was originally called Madcat - and its servers are located in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the US.

The recent closure of Microsoft's Mixer platform, which cost Ninja an estimated $30 million less than a year ago, makes the timing of the Trovo 500 rollout interesting, to say the least. Microsoft is a significantly larger company than Tencent, but Tencent is hardly a lightweight and much more focused on gaming and social media.

And this is not the company's first attempt at a dominant platform either: in 2019, it launched a digital storefront for Steam competitor WeGame worldwide, which still offers relatively few games, but the South China Morning Post reported this year reported earlier that it had reached an estimated 70 million monthly active users.