[KennyBlanken]

I take the first to mean that you can't purposefully degrade the quality from what would otherwise be possible, not that you can't use higher bitrate elsewhere.

The second bit simply says "third party service" - nothing stops you from doing the combined chat overlay locally and streaming the result.

Also, twitch is still very much the top dog, but you're right - they're actually having to compete against youtube now.

[madeofpalk]

> The second bit simply says "third party service"

The spirit of the terms seems to be they don't want combined chat, and are relying on the fact that most streamers are not going to develop their own chat combining software.

If people try to get past this on a technicality, expect them to revise the conditions.

[isatis]

You are correct.

A huge majority of streamers rely on overlays provided by either the companies Streamlabs or StreamElements for things like displaying a chat on their stream, among others.

[KennyBlanken]

There are multiple software packages to do this already.

Why are you commenting on something you clearly know nothing about?

[corobo]

People learn better when you give them the information they're lacking rather than snark at them for lacking it.

For the rest of us who also know nothing, could you expand on your thoughts? Information is much more interesting than an internet slap fight :)

[madeofpalk]

I presumed there was. I interpret running someone elses software locally on your computer as "third party".

But, silly pedantry aside, my point still stands. It seems like Twitch doesn't want chats combined, regardless of the mechanism.

[qwery]

> not that you can't use higher bitrate elsewhere

If, as a user, I think the video quality on another platform is superior to that on Twitch and knew that there was an alternative platform where I could watch the same thing at higher quality, the experience on Twitch is clearly less than that on the other platform. This breaches the first guideline.

> The second bit simply says "third party service"

And this is the real point: it simply says. It doesn't clearly specify, there is no definition of these terms. These vaguely/innocently worded hints will be enforced opaquely whenever they feel like it, without explanation of what, specifically, you did wrong.

[enragedcacti]

> The second bit simply says "third party service" - nothing stops you from doing the combined chat overlay locally and streaming the result.

I think that is either legalese or poor wording in the text of the actual guideline, The FAQ has this to say about personal use of chat combining software:

> The prohibition on third party tools only applies to content presented to viewers either on or off Twitch.

"tools" and "applies to content presented to viewers" I think gives an idea of how they will actually enforce this versus the "service" wording of the guideline