Kamcord, one of the big video clip sharing services on iOS, is undergoing a big transition to livestreaming gameplay footage, and it appears they’re abandoning their core clip sharing API. And they’re pretty much dumping it with a Dear John letter, as news was buried in an email they sent out, saying that they’re not going to be supporting the current recording SDK, only supporting watching through that. The livestreaming from desktop is their focus from now on. This apparently came out last month, but is just now making the rounds among a bunch of developers who use Kamcord in their games but apparently rarely read ambiguously titled SDK emails.

I talked to Kevin Pazirandeh of Auxbrain, who implemented Kamcord into Zombie Highway 2 (Free). He says that after speaking to Kamcord on the phone that “Most things should continue to work, even sharing. But should Facebook break an API, or iOS 9 break an API, Kamcord will not fix it. Servers will stay up." And that middle part is the important thing. iOS updates break things regularly, and Kamcord developers are suddenly left with the service they rely on to share videos going away entirely.

The problem here is that even though Kamcord’s going into livestreaming, they’re second behind Mobcrush, who we’ve chosen to exclusively stream with, in terms of doing livestreaming easily from the Mac, and Mobcrush is hard at work on the Windows client. Kamcord’s lining up various content creators on their service, but they still feel kind of like they’re playing second fiddle to the hot newcomer who beat them to the market. Plus, Mobcrush is hiring a ton of talent, including high-ranking ex-Apple and Google employees. Their sphere of influence could be potentially huge, and Kamcord runs the risk of coming off as the “what are they doing now?" company. However, that might not matter to users, especially if they get the right people to appeal to the service. Plus, being on Android ahead of Mobcrush helps, though iOS is still the enthusiast’s platform of choice.

And why would developers want to support Kamcord going forward if they’re getting burned with a service that’s abandoning them so quickly? Kevin Pazirandeh isn’t jumping over to another service for video sharing in Zombie Highway 2, instead abandoning video for just screenshot sharing. And ReplayKit is coming in iOS9, though there are some misgivings about the inability to pause recordings and the frequent approvals required to use the feature, as introduced in the WWDC video.

We’ll see just how this shakes out for Kamcord. Who knows, maybe in iOS 10 Apple introduces a StreamKit and Sherlocks Mobcrush, Kamcord, or whoever else thinks streaming from an iOS device is a potentially viable market. But right now? Developers aren’t happy with Kamcord, and if Kamcord ever needs them again, well, these developers will likely whisper “No." Best of luck to Kamcord, as I think competition is a good thing in the mobile streaming market, but I do wonder just what the future for them is going to be, if there is a future.