For years, Twitch has been working on whether it can balance being a place where video game players can happily make money for their fans with live streaming and being a profitable company. I made it.
This conundrum has plagued the platform as it grew from a tiny startup called Justin.tv to an Amazon-owned, pandemic-fueled behemoth in the world of live video. Today, 8 million streamers broadcast game exploits, culinary experiments, and political hot takes to 31 million viewers every day, every month.
Along the way, Twitch has mostly preserved the goodwill of its lifeblood, the streamers. But that’s changing, and streamers say they’re increasingly worried they’re being forgotten by the platform in the name of profit. , and the service risks losing even more to other live-streaming platforms.
Rebellion aired earlier this month in San Diego at TwitchCon in front of 30,000 people. Fans can meet their favorite streamers in person. Streamers can still meet up and reconnect with friends as usual, while Twitch’s recent decision to allow some streamers to receive more revenue from fans who subscribe to their channels. said he was angry with It represents a shift in priorities for Twitch.
“The frustration with that decision is palpable,” said Taylor Drury, who is streaming on Twitch. Tyrian“We’re all checking with each other, ‘Do you hate this?’ ‘Yeah, we all hate this.’
Streamers say there are other signs that Twitch is losing touch with its community. This is a complaint that has been leveled over the years as other streaming and video services mature.
Twitch’s efforts to convince streamers to place more ads on their channels have discouraged creators who say more ads alienate viewers. left. The streamer says communication with the company has deteriorated and believes Twitch is prioritizing adding engineers over hiring people to handle their concerns.
Twitch spokeswoman Samantha Faught said Twitch has tripled the number of employees in “community-facing” roles over the past two years, adding: new Method For streamers to provide feedback. She acknowledged that the platform’s rapid growth has made it “difficult to expand our sense of personalized communication and intimate connection”. said.
The streamer also suspects Twitch is under pressure from Amazon, which purchased the service in 2014. in twenty years.The company has focused on improving warehouse efficiency and replaced a closed team with a boring project We have temporarily frozen employment in the retail sector.
Analysts don’t believe the site, which has more than 1,800 employees, will be profitable, but Amazon has not disclosed Twitch’s financial situation.
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“It’s crazy that Amazon wants Twitch to squeeze more revenue from its top content creators,” Hasan Piker, one of the site’s celebrities, said in an interview. At his booth on the convention floor, Hassanabi was distributing front pages of fake newspapers on Twitch with the provocative headline, “Twitch steals 30% of revenue from content creators.”
The subscription revenue change only affects streamers with so-called premium contracts with the platform, who retain 70% of their subscription revenue and distribute 30% to Twitch. Starting next June, revenue from these streamers’ subscriptions will be split 50/50 on Twitch after the initial $100,000. The company says hundreds of streamers are now earning enough to be affected by the change.
Twitch president Dan Clancy said in an interview that the change will allow Twitch to respond to rising live video hosting costs. He also claimed that it would ultimately help streamers.
“Ultimately, the more viewers we have, the more profit streamers get,” he said. “A big part of that is trying to get to this position that allows us to continue to maintain, invest steadily and grow.”
Clancy said Amazon isn’t involved in day-to-day decision-making.
“They give us a lot of freedom. They’re very bullish on Twitch,” he said. “And it’s not one of many detailed interferences.”
Twitch has also made some changes in recent months to appeal to streamers. More cuts in ad revenue, Enable broadcasting on rival platforms When reduce the amount Before you can cash out, you need to make money on your site.
Twitch is betting that the new features will help it appeal to a broader range of streamers, even as policies like subscription revenue changes irritate a handful of top personalities.
“I don’t think the way to deal with streamers in the long run is to focus on special deals with the top 0.1% of streamers,” Twitch CEO Emmett Shear said in an interview. Instead, he said, “the focus is on making our standard deals attractive.”
Some streamers at the San Diego conference said they understood the rationale.
“What Twitch is doing, I like it,” said Antwayne Doctor, who is streaming on Twitch. baby wokAlthough he provides entertainment, he said he thinks a 50-50 revenue share is fair because Twitch has helped him grow his audience. “It’s a partnership,” said Docter.
But a former Twitch employee who focused on streamer relationships said Twitch has prioritized its engineering team and money-making efforts over satisfying content creators in recent years. Content His Ben Goldhaber, who heads up his marketing and was one of Twitch’s first adopters, said Twitch took off in the first place because of the strong bonds it built with streamers. said.
“That has changed,” said Goldhaber, who was fired in 2018 and is now the chief executive of the esports app. “They have moved away from the original strategy of pleasing the creators and us winning.”
Some streamers and former employees believe that the management shake-up over the past two years indicates a shift in priorities.
Twitch co-founder and chief operating officer Kevin Lin stepped down in 2020. Lynn’s replacement, Sarah Clemens, and chief content officer, Michael Aragon, both resigned this year. Clemens reacted to the change in subscription revenue: Tweet “SMH” which means “shaking head”.
Lin was seen as the face of less technical areas of Twitch, such as managing relationships with streamers. Zachary Diaz, who worked on Aragon’s team, said Aragon was someone “who could attend executive meetings and fight to the death” against proposals against streamers.
“Unfortunately all the executives who had that as a mentality have left,” he said. Faught, a Twitch spokesperson, said it was “totally inaccurate.” She said that beefing up the product and engineering teams “would be at odds with prioritizing relationships with streamers.”
According to video game consultant Rod Breslau, Twitch “is growing fast, like all sites. If it’s not a tight-knit, bloody community, there’s no reason to stay on Twitch.” (Twitch is known for its purple color scheme.)
The exodus also created a disconnect between Twitch executives and some general staff, two current Twitch employees said on condition of anonymity. They said many employees internally expressed concerns about the new subscription revenue policy and how it was communicated to streamers.
Kyle Hincliffe, a streamer known as villain On Twitch, the Twitch employee he spoke to was “on the same page as us – there’s some disappointment there.” rice field.
At TwitchCon, streamers were able to put their grievances aside at times. They spent hours signing autographs, dressed in colorful costumes, packed downtown nightclubs, and reveled at the Megan Thee Stallion show. Appearing on the concert stage next door Master Chief, the protagonist of the Halo series.
For many, the experience was bittersweet. It reminded me why he came to Twitch in the first place and why now he’s fighting to keep it from changing.
“We love this platform. Anything they do is really good. Give them a thumbs up. We’re very vocal about it,” Drury said. “But we will be equally vocal about what makes us feel more disconnected.”
Karen Weise Contributed a report from Seattle.