At the end of 2020, Twitch started experimenting with non-skippable pop-ups that urge you to watch streams directly on Twitch, rather than on third-party services. The function has been working in test mode since December, but serious discussion about it started at the end of January. Here’s what happened, why the gaming community didn’t like it and how this will affect the streaming industry.
What happened?
Since December, those who watch Twitch broadcasts from third-party services started to see this notification (previously it was shown to those who use extensions like AdBlock):
Community called these notifications as Purple Screen of Death (PSoD) by analogy with the "Blue screen of death" in Windows. It is impossible to miss this notification, they began to appear on screens every 15 minutes on all Twitch streams embedded on third-party sites and services.
In addition to the “Purple screen of death” there are also pop-ups that appear in the embedded Twitch players urging you to continue your session on Twitch:
Ben Goldhaber was one of those who spoke against the new Twitch policy. Former Twitch employee and member of the founding team he claims that it not only hurts user experience, but also creates problems for a lot of third-party services that work with Twitch API.
Who is affected by Twitch's actions?
According to Goldhaber, the new Twitch policy will ruin plans for independent third-party sites that legally use Twitch embeds.
Essentially any form of embedding a Twitch stream on third-party platforms becomes unprofitable. As community noted, this harms all services and companies operating with the Twitch API. The first thing that comes to mind is Counter-Strike's mecca HLTV.org, through which many users watch esports tournaments.
Popular games have also faced problems with Twitch. The world championship is underway right now in PUBG, and since Twitch stream is embedded into the game it also displays the “Purple screen of death”. The same applies to other games that promote esports in game, such as Brawlhalla and Rocket League.
Sites with official broadcasts of tournaments face a similar problem. For example, notifications appeared on the streams of the live service LoL Esports. Same will probably happen to Intel Extreme Masters live stream pages.
Twitch itself is also hurt by the new policy: namely, some sections of the platform. It applies to Music and the sports section: for example, NBA and NHL streams are primarily watched on sports sites whose users are not authorized on Twitch.
What's the logic behind Twitch decision?
Although some members of the gaming community blame Twitch for greed, the service protects itself from fraud Now it will be more difficult for streamers and various esports studios to cheat with fake viewers, so they won’t receive additional money from ads.
In addition, it is difficult for Twitch to discern whether the traffic coming from third-party resources is real or fraud, so restrictions are imposed on all built-in streams. So the streaming service forces users not only to go to the main site, but also to log in.
Some members of the gaming community see a general Internet trend in all this, as services started to persistently oblige users to register on the site in order to watch content. As Overwatch League broadcast talent Andrew Rush noted, similar steps have been previously taken by Reddit and Instagram.
The change probably won't affect the majority of Twitch viewers, so the most popular streamers and categories may not notice the difference. However, unauthorized users make up approximately 30-33% of the total Twitch audience in prime time, which is over million people. The question is how many of them will be ready to login on Twitch.
It should also be noted that in the long term, the innovation will only benefit the service and streamers. Viewers will spend more time on channels and broadcasts, which means they will interact more actively with various extensions and see various ad integrations more often (as well as ads).
What could have been done differently?
Community backlash mostly tied to the fact that pop-up windows interrupt broadcasts. As an alternative Twitch could follow YouTube and Facebook, which simply exclude autoplay from overall viewership statistics. This will avoid problems during the broadcasts, as well as it will be unprofitable for streamers to post autoplay of their streams on third-party services rather than getting traffic to their own channel page.
As Twitch employee Tyler tyvick Vickers noted, the company is still only testing innovations, so the current format of notifications is not yet decided. With backlash occurred, the company may as well reconsider its approach to embedded autoplay streams. Especially considering there are other ways to deal with traffic fraud.
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