Yesterday Twitch announced a change in their gambling policy, and today they made a huge announcement about subscriptions revenues shares. This is a topic that has been discussed for a long time, with most streamers saying that a 70%-30% split in favor of the creator, just like YouTube has, would be the fairest option.
In a long blog post, Twitch president Dan Clancy addressed this very important and subjective matter. He started by saying that streamers are the heart and soul of Twitch, and that the team at Twitch spent a lot of time finding out the best strategies to help streamers increase their income.
He stated that the baseline revenue share when it comes to subscriptions is 50%-50%, and that the vast majority of streamers have these terms in their agreement. However, he acknowledges that the streaming platform offered “standard agreements with premium subscription terms to select streamers as they grew larger”. This was something already very well known in the streaming community, but it’s the first time that Twitch actually acknowledge it.
Dan Clancy says that the majority of these “premium deals” went to larger streamers, which was a problem according to him, since “we don’t believe it’s right for those on standard contracts to have varied revenue shares based on the size of the streamer”. So Twitch decided to end that type of deal about a year ago, and stopped offering “premium agreements to new streamers not already on these terms”.
Despite that, Twitch will not completely end the premium deals and will allow streamers that are already under these deals to continue to have a “special” subscription split. These streamers will continue to have a 70%-30% revenue split for the first $100K earned through subscription revenue, and everything above that amount will split at the standard rating of 50%-50%. This change will only go into effect in June of 2023. This is a measure that only benefits big streamers. Dan Clancy justified this decision by saying:
“In an ideal world all streamers would be on the same set of terms regardless of size. However, instituting that policy would have a negative impact on the streamers currently on these terms, many of whom were instrumental in helping us build the Twitch we know today. These streamers have come to depend on the additional revenue split to maintain their standard of living.”
In the end, Twitch will still maintain the 50%-50% revenue split for 90% of the streamers, but their justification is a little bit vague, at least according to many content creators. Dan Clancy says that in order to provide the best live streaming experience Twitch spends a lot of money, and many streamers don't really see the point in this argument provided by Twitch.
Streamers Opinions
It’s safe to say that the streaming community in general is not happy with this news. These measures don't do anything to combat the struggles that many small and up-and-coming streamers go through. The fact that the main competitor to Twitch has a 70%-30% revenue split, makes things even worse, with many streamers wondering why YouTube can do it but Twitch can’t.
The solutions presented by Twitch for streamers to increase their income are also not good. The main solution proposed was for streamers to run more ads, since the revenue share on ads went up to 55%. However, many streaming stars, such as DrDisrespect, have stated that Twitch has a lot of ads, and that because of that it ruins the viewer's experience.
Streamers also didn't like the “excuses” given by Twitch for the fact a 70%-30% revenue split isn't viable. Most said that it doesn't make sense for a company that is owned by Amazon to complain about high “maintenance costs”, with others even saying that Twitch servers can’t even support streams over 8K bitrate, while YouTube can, meaning it made no sense for Twitch to talk about the “high cost of delivering the Twitch service”.
Many streaming stars were disappointed with the post, and left heavy critics for Twitch in the replies. Internet star Jacksepticeye, who once streamed on Twitch, said that Twitch was acting like an amateur platform, and that it wasn't surprising many Twitch partners are deciding to leave the platform. Words such as ‘embarrassing’, ‘joke’, ‘sad’, and ‘disappointing’, were used by many streamers to describe this decision by Twitch.
The revenue sharing in subscriptions will continue to be a hot topic, and with so many streamers leaving Twitch for YouTube, this wasn't the best move Twitch could have made. With thousands of streamers unhappy with the decision, and the platform receiving heavy criticism, the chance we see a lot of small and up-and-coming streamers leaving Twitch is a big one.
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