Creative Solutions Acquires Lightstream to Expand into Gaming and Strengthen Cloud Offering
- The acquisition marks the first gaming venture for Creative Solutions
- It enhances Creative Solutions’ premium live streaming technology for the global content creator community
- Transaction to include Lightstream Studio, Lightstream Cloud, and Rainmaker.gg
- It complements Creative Solutions’ overarching strategy to develop innovative video technology for content creators alongside Teradek, SmallHD, Wooden Camera and Amimon
Creative Solutions, a division of The Vitec Group plc (LSE: VTC), is pleased to announce the acquisition of Lightstream, a US-based tech company that builds a cloud-native live video platform, broadcast software, and creator tools with specialization in the video game live streaming industry.
Lightstream is a world leader in live streaming technology for the massive and fast growing gaming market, and has strong strategic partnerships and technology integrations with Microsoft’s Xbox and Amazon’s Twitch.
Live streaming across all industries has grown exponentially during the pandemic, no less in gaming. This acquisition allows Creative Solutions to bring its broadcast-quality hardware, mobile apps, and cloud technology to the gaming market on a global scale, and opens up new creative possibilities for storytellers.
For the past 13 years, Creative Solutions has mobilized content creators with hardware and software products spanning the broadcast, live production, and cinema markets. Integrating Lightstream’s creative suite and patented cloud production architecture with Teradek’s IP video technology and the full suite of Creative Solutions production tools raises the potential for live video content creation in every segment.
“The powerful combination of our unique cloud-native products and Teradek’s market leading hardware, apps and cloud technology unlocks truly limitless creative potential,” said Stu Grubbs, CEO & Co-Founder of Lightstream. “We couldn’t be more excited to join such respected brands and a talented group of people just as driven by the power of storytelling.”
“The powerful combination of our unique cloud-native products and Teradek’s market leading hardware, apps and cloud technology unlocks truly limitless creative potential,” said Stu Grubbs, CEO & Co-Founder of Lightstream. “We couldn’t be more excited to join such respected brands and a talented group of people just as driven by the power of storytelling.”
Lighstream offers three products:
Lighstream offers three products:
Lighstream Studio is a live streaming studio designed to remove technical hurdles and put advanced production capabilities in the hands of beginners. All powered by Lightstream’s patented cloud architecture. Via any browser, creators can bring on remote guests, mix live video feeds, brand streams with overlays, and engage audiences with dynamic motion graphics. Lightstream’s cloud architecture and unique integration with Twitch enable personalized streams for Xbox and PlayStation gamers without a PC or the additional hardware that is usually required.
Lighstream Cloud is the world’s leading API driven cloud platform for live video production. It allows developers to build creative software and live streaming platforms on top of Lightstream’s powerful cloud architecture. Production can be completely automated – programmatically triggering layout changes, combining remote feeds, compositing dynamic content, or creating variations of the same broadcast for different markets in under 500 milliseconds.
Rainmaker.gg provides the tools creators need to understand, engage, and activate their audience and brands the data and campaign tools they need to work with them. Creators get insight into their channel’s performance and a comprehensive stream management suite, including overlays, tipping, chat tools, and alerts. Brands and game publishers discover and create custom reports about creator and game performance across the world’s largest streaming platforms.
"We want to get rid of the technical barriers making live streaming hard," explains Nicol Verheem, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Creative Solutions. "Merging Teradek's video encoding and cloud distribution capabilities with the Lightstream Cloud platform will immediately simplify and improve the overall quality and delivery of live content everywhere."
Lightstream’s founders and team will be joining Creative Solutions and there will be no immediate changes to the pricing or structure of any of their current offerings. Creative Solutions will begin developing organic integrations of Lightstream's cloud-first approach with Creative Solutions' traditional live streaming hardware technologies.
"It’s about empowering the next generation of storytellers," Verheem details. "To give them the tools to tell better stories live, in real-time, without sacrificing quality."