SOOP

SOOP is AfreecaTV renamed, and the company explains the name itself: it means forest, and the point of dropping the word television was to move the idea away from broadcasting and toward conversation. It is old by the standards of this batch, and it presents itself as a place where the users are the owners and where anyone can broadcast without special equipment or cost. It is Korean first and has only recently decided it is not: the country domain became a global one in 2026, and the help centre that serves every country exists only in English. The categories on its front page describe it better than any sentence — League of Legends, StarCraft and Minecraft beside talk and camera streams, virtual streamers, and music radio.

A streamer broadcasts from a computer or a phone, with the company's own tool available for the job, and a viewer watches live, catches up on a replay, or scrolls a short-form feed the platform calls Catch. What a viewer can do during a stream goes further than on any other platform in this batch: a Star Balloon is a paid item sent to the streamer, a Video Balloon plays a video onto the stream, a Challenge Mission attaches a request to balloons and hands the streamer the whole pot if the mission is completed, and a QuickView pass skips the advertisement on entry. Streamers are graded in three tiers, and the top of the ladder has a door with numbers on it: a Best streamer is selected monthly from applicants with at least 500 hours of streaming, 500 followers and 60 streaming days in three months, while a Partner is a streamer who has signed an agreement.

Watching is free, and the paid layer is documented far better than on most platforms here — including the prices, which are published rather than confined to an app store. A Star Balloon costs 100 won, so the smallest pack of ten costs 1,100 won with tax, purchases are capped at 10,000 balloons a day, unspent balloons hold their value for five years, and there is a seven-day refund window on any that have not been given away. Where the documentation stops is the number that matters most: subscriptions are stated to pay the streamer 70 percent and an Ad Balloon pays a flat 70 won, but for the Star Balloon itself the terms say only that the revenue share follows company policy and print no figure at all. The thresholds are published in full, though: a streamer can request a payout at 500 balloons, settlements run once 50,000 won has accumulated, and tax is withheld at 3 percent with a local surcharge on top.

The age rules are more layered than anywhere else in this batch. Overseas users under 14 cannot sign up through standard registration or social-media accounts, the terms allow a user under 14 to register with a legal representative's consent, and anyone under 19 needs that consent to pay for anything. Age-restricted broadcasts are for over-19s, and verification is not a one-off: a user verifies once and renews it each year, and an account that has not been through real-name verification cannot watch or take part in those streams at all. Enforcement is codified rather than discretionary, which is rare here: suspensions are published as a scale from 3 days to permanent, applied without accumulation except for cheating, piracy and copyright; moderators have their own published ladder of ejections running from an hour to a week; and a suspended user gets exactly one appeal with a decision promised within three days. The company says it monitors around the clock and names what it watches: password-protected streams, age-restricted streams, broadcasts involving young streamers, and repeat offenders. One change deserves a reader's attention because it takes something away: since 2026 a replay lasts 90 days for a basic streamer, a year if it drew 50 viewers, 2 years for a best streamer and indefinitely only for a partner — where a recording with 50 views used to be kept forever — and the change applies to recordings that already exist.

A Korean audience first, watching games, talk streams, virtual streamers and music radio, and a streamer who wants a graded path rather than a flat one: the incentives run from a basic tier through a monthly Best selection with hard numeric requirements to a signed partnership. Anyone outside Korea is now served from the same address, but the guidance written for them is in a second language, and the parts of the culture a newcomer would need — what a balloon means, how a mission works — are documented more fully than the money is. It is not for someone who wants to broadcast occasionally and keep the result: on this platform an archive now expires.

The deepest mechanics in this batch and the widest gap between what the platform documents and what it does not. Prices, the daily cap, the refund window, the tax rate, the payout thresholds, the suspension scale and a time-limited appeal are all published, which puts SOOP ahead of most of this directory on paper. The one figure missing is the one a streamer most needs: the share of a Star Balloon they receive, which the terms refer to company policy without stating, in pointed contrast to the 70 percent published for subscriptions and the flat 70 won for an Ad Balloon. The direction of travel on archives is the other thing to weigh, since a retention change now takes recordings away from most streamers, including ones already made. And the platform has decided it is global without yet behaving that way: one address for the world, an English-only help centre, and a product culture that a reader outside Korea can only half see.