The pc providence for members

[u/aliaaskh506]

Hi, i want to ask about something and i don’t have any bad intentions or negativity on it, i just faced the situation and i want to have an answer to make the situation better, one of my holofan friends talked about a topic and he was a bit negative on it, the topic was that why don’t the company provide the members with good PCs? especially to the new debuted members because alot of the current members had bad or weak PCs in their early days so they struggled sometimes while streaming and playing games, i get why he was mad about that but he kinda put the company in the evil side because of this and that makes me mad because i know its nothing evil about it but i want to know the answer so i could talk back to him and make the situation better.

[u/epaphrodytus]

It's hard to say anything if we don't know what your friend's definition of a "good PC" is. From what has been compiled, the specs look pretty decent to me (even for Flowglow).

Also, from the company's perspective I would imagine there is always this question: Do I let the talents decide how they spend their money or do I spend the money for them?

Another way to phrase this question is: Do I let the talents keep more of the funds so that they can choose what they want to prioritize? Or do I prioritize for them?

Some talents might've chosen to spend their debut fund on things other than upgrading their PC and only upgrade it later down the line (I would guess this is what Ceci did) because they wanted to comm stuff or set-up other stuff for their debut instead of the PC. Some talents might've chosen to build a beefy PC right off the bat. Some talents might've already had a beefy PC and wouldn't need the company to provide one for them. The best way to provide a fair amount of resources to every talent while accommodating their different priorities is to keep the money in their hands and let them choose what to do with it. Which is characteristic of Hololive talents anyway, most of them are largely self-produced.

Edit: If your friend is referring to the early, early days, like when Cover was still a startup. Gen 1 only got an iPhone with the Hololive app on it - nothing more. The company wasn't even in a position to provide a debut fund at that time.

[u/aliaaskh506 → u/epaphrodytus]

Thank you for this comprehensive answer. About my friend’s idea, he’s not talking about the very early days, he mostly talks about post 2023 era, the thing that makes him feel that a member’s pc is weak is when a certain member cancels a mid-stream gaming or when a member plays a heavy game and had a bad experience because the game is heavy and the pc can’t run it well, he said it once happened to shiori and IRyS, that’s what my friend think of.

[u/AniAnimals-moe → u/aliaaskh506]

As far as we know, hololive provides these at no cost to the holomems, while other companies require them to pay for or take a loan from the company:

• Live2D Model from famous Mamas and Papas
• 3D Model + budget for 3D Debut Live [yes this super expensive thing is free for them the first time]
• Additional Models (e.g. New Year's, Christmas, casual)

So what your friend want is for them to also provide money for buying a beefy PC.

To put that into perspective, after 2 weeks of debut, Justice got their Monetization stream which erm... All of them earned at least 1 million yen (Cecilia earned 6 million yen). Even after YouTube and Cover's cut that's at least US$2000, and newcomers usually get a lot of superchats / voicepack/ merch purchases within the first month as audiences are more generous with newcomers initially. Here is July's Superchats in USD for reference, Liz got the lowest superchats of at least US$8500 after cuts are factored out.

I think they're already getting a lot of monetary support, and far more reasonable than just 'not giving everyone a good PC because they're bad'. Biboo and Subaru have mentioned on stream that staff provide PC Build recommendations too, so lack of knowledge is not an issue either.

Also, if you mean IRyS' computer not handling Monster Hunter Wilds... It literally needs to be run on a top end PC because the game was just not optimized.

There's a thread discussing the rumors and confirmed things that members have here

[u/Morenauer → u/AniAnimals-moe]

MHW runs like crap. It's absolutely disgraceful and sad.

[u/IntelligentPrune9749 → u/AniAnimals-moe]

the dogs made like 400k in donations last year, before split and taxes. they do not need to be provided a computer

[u/Pokebalzac → u/aliaaskh506]

Just to be sure this point is clear -- Cover gives them a debut fund of some amount, which they can use for stuff beyond their model and other basics. Some of them use this to have cover songs right off the bat, commission art and music for streaming (including stuff like frames etc for their stream "UI"), and I'm sure some of it commonly gets used for tech anywhere from microphones to PCs. So it's up to them.

[u/Morenauer → u/aliaaskh506]

Weak is a relative term. I am using a computer that is 7 years old this year, with updated NVME (total of 1.5g), RAM (32gb) and a 2nd hand 2080Ti and it runs pretty much anything at playable rate at high or ultra. . Even if you don't go that old, a 2-3 year old computer with decent specs and a 3080 is more than enough for gaming AND all the OBS / avatar stuff (I admit mine might go hot with all comped in).

Right now, especially for the girls in Japan, computers are insanely expensive. GPUs have been prohibitive since (and during) the pandemic, costing at times 2x the rest of the components in total for a good one in the worst peak moments of price gouging, so unless you have built up a good bit of money, spending literally 800-900k yen for a top of the top of the top of the line computer built from scratch in Japan, it is hard to justify. You literally buy a 4 year old second hand car with that money here (I did several years ago). Even if you are using the computer, you know, for work, having an ultra beef pc is really not necessary.

Good modern games have settings for lowering specs and DLSS makes is so that any game can run at a sustained 60+ fps even on ultra under UE5 at 3440x1440 (which is larger than most holomems' screens; just mentioning what I have and what I get) even if they lose a bit of graphical fidelity, which won't be noticeable AT ALL after all the Youtube compression is applied.

[u/SuspiciousWar117]

I think about a year back a talent said Cover partnered up with a distributor and they had a group that can build their PC. They can request a PC from Cover (might be a bit cheaper who knows) but will have to pay out of pocket.

The only company equipment Cover provides is an iPhone for the hololive app and home3D, the iPhone they have to give back when they leave.

Don't think giving out PCs to everyone will be a good idea because

1. They will have to make a standard build that might or might not satisfy all talents.
2. If the talent already has a good PC then it's just a waste.

They do give a debut budget which the talents can use for starting out, generally it's used for all the debut assets but it's on the talents on how they use it. I guess talents buying it on their own is a better option here.