Several top Twitch streamers are voicing their anger about Twitch's plan to cut pay-outs in its partnerships program to boost its profits.
Twitch to Cut Pay-Outs of Streamers
According to Bloomberg, Twitch is considering a number of changes to increase the revenue it collects from its most popular streamers.
These changes include encouraging the top streamers to run more ads on videos, reducing the revenue share for the top streamers from 70% to 50%, and introducing a new tier system allowing the streamers to graduate through different revenue splits based on a set of metrics.
Twitch could release partners from exclusivity clauses, letting them stream on rival platforms like Facebook and YouTube.
Bloomberg stressed that updates to the partnerships program are not finalized and could eventually be abandoned, while Twitch refused to comment on the news to the publication.
Top Twitch Streamers React to Rumored Changes
In response to these plans, a lot of streamers said that the mooted changes would make life harder for them and it could force them to move to other streaming platforms.
Other streamers noted that Twitch has no serious competition in the streaming world, allowing the company to extract profits as it sees fit.
Twitch streamer Jericho said that subscriptions are more important to the lift of every streamer than almost any other utility Twitch offers. Changing the pay-out is to financially devastate and remove thousands of top full-time creators from the platform immediately.
Irish YouTuber Jacksepticeye called the plan a "joke" and that it would make everything worse for everyone "except Twitch themselves.
Hasan Piker, a famous left-wing Twitch streamer, said it was "wild" that Twitch did not consider its current revenue splits profitable enough but that the platform's biggest names do not have anywhere else to go if the cut did happen.
Piker posted his thoughts on Twitter and said that Twitch only makes plans like this because they think that there is no other competitor in the livestreaming space.
nearly my entire revenue comes from subscribers who elect to give me $5 a month. twitch doesn’t consider the 50/50 split it takes from smaller creators in that process profitable enough. that’s wild.
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) April 27, 2022
Pike said that Mixer is already dead, Facebook is a "black hole for relevance," and YouTube is too big to care about livestreaming and too slow to change.
Some streamers did point out some positives in the report. YouTuber and Twitch streamer Stanz said that most streamers are already getting 50/50, and a tier system that automatically moves you higher would be better than "begging Twitch for a split."
According to data platform TwitchTracker, the Amazon-owned streaming service currently has around 51,000 streamers in its partnership program.
Twitch viewers can pay to subscribe to channels for $5 a month with perks included such as custom emoticons and ad-free content, if the streamer allows it, with the platform then splitting the revenue with content creators, according to The Verge.
Amazon does not break out the revenue figures for Twitch, but the tech company as a whole has been hit by slowing growth.
In its most recent earnings report, even though the sales increased almost $8 billion in Q1 year-on-year, analysts still balked at its lower-than-expected projects for Q2.
In February, Twitch launched the AIP program to give the streamers a more reliable income.
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Written by Sophie Webster
