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Is this a pro-small streamer move, or a sign of struggles at Twitch?

It was announced a while ago that Twitch would no longer be cutting huge cheques for its biggest streamers.

Following on from the most recent round of layoffs, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy opened up about how the streaming giant is losing money.

It seems like the decision to not pursue the big contracts is tied to the desire to not negatively impact smaller streamers, who would effectively be subsidising those bigger streamers.

Do you think the decision to focus on smaller streamers at the expense of losing some of the bigger ones will help Twitch stay on top, or will this come back to bite them in the end?

Created at 4:36pm, 15th January, 2024. Page last updated at 2:43pm, 16th May, 2024.

This post has been edited by the author for the following reason: Correction

Retro Stu 1/15/2024, 9:48:46 PM

I think it's a really interesting point to raise and my first instinct is I don't know.

I want to believe it will benefit us smaller streamers but given their penchant for giving streamers stuff they don't want/ask for and making it a big deal "look at this thing we've done for you! Aren't we great?" while doing precious little for so long on bigger issues (hate raids just as one example) my head says their focus is too lasered in on the bottom line and it's no surprise they opened up their TOS to allow us to dual stream elsewhere because they've already lost a good bunch of people, and that's just from the communities I find myself in.

At this stage it kind of feels like whatever Twitch do it doesn't really benefit us in any meaningful way, like they've lost touch and become too corporate. I know it's been a successful platform for a number of years but I do wonder whether the pandemic boom of people taking to streaming (myself included) saw them rest on their laurels a bit and then when the world started to return to normal and numbers really started to drop off they panicked.

Of course this is all speculation on my part, but it all feels a bit desperate and a bit too little too late.

FirestormGamingTeam 1/15/2024, 11:14:50 PM

As someone who is self-employed:

It was announced a while ago that Twitch would no longer be cutting huge cheques for its biggest streamers.

This screams "we are running out of money" and it's simply because, people do not want to use Twitch when they can't be noticed, My friend is a skilled gamer, he streamed for 5 years, when I say skilled I mean skilled, but never once, did he get any real growth, why? No idea, but this happens all the time.

Twitch is spiraling down.

MURRRAAAAY 1/17/2024, 1:21:12 PM

I really am not sure how much benefit or difference these exlusive contracts made, as it was interesting to see what happened with mixer. I think unfortunately it’s a sign of the struggles and twitch doing whatever it can to lower operating costs to try and turn a profit. I really feel they should focus so much more on the advertising integration solutions they have as right now they really damage the viewer experience and I’m sure there has got to be a bunch of different ways to help increase ad rev whilst not interrupting the viewer experience so much usually with ads that are poorly targeted in my opinion which make viewers switch off instead of sitting through 3 mins of ads just to see if a stream looks worthwhile hanging about in. Better integration with Amazon shopping is a must also to help drive revenue through existing core Amazon businesses. Also some more discovery tools so creators can grow on platform are a must, they were slow to move with clips as that could have been the TikTok of twitch if they moved quicker. I hope they do solve their puzzles as I do think it is the best live streaming platform by miles, for viewers and creators. One change I am really hoping they don’t remove is twitch prime subs as I think that would be a huge negative impact on the twitch community. YouTube is far behind, they seem obsessed with short form content, and Facebook seems to have given up on its Facebook gaming live streaming aspirations. So it’s there for twitch to win or loose I feel!