Twitch will run preroll ads on your stream unless you elect to run at least 3 minutes of ads per hour. These preroll ads have a huge effect on viewership because new viewers who tune in to an immediate ad will typically just leave. So, these "elective" ads are not very optional. But, this is a lose-lose situation, because these elective ads are very disruptive to viewers too. They are often implemented as a 90 second ad every 30 minutes. If this doesn't sound bad, remember that this is live content. If you're watching an ad, you're missing out on content, and when the ad is over, there's no way to wind it back to see what you missed.
Besides the ad policies, the Twitch revenue split for subscriptions has been changing over time. Historically it defaulted to 50/50 and most streamers of any decent size audience would have a contract to be granted 70/30 split. However, the 70/30 split has been phased out and today nearly no streamer on the platform has it anymore. This is a huge difference for streamers. The CEO of Twitch was handing out 70/30 split "coupons" as a prize in a live event[1], it's a big deal.
Besides subscription revenue, Twitch is constantly battling to reduce other sources of income, like branded sponsorships. Last year they announced significant restrictions on streamers displaying branded content with sponsors.[2] While these rules were soon reverted, it suggests Twitch is in a fight for its life. All indications point that this is going to continue to be a problem in the future. In short, streamers need to deal with the ads because their revenue from other sources is constantly at threat.
And here’s the other thing: why doesn’t an Amazon prime subscription remove ads? Is there even a way to buy an ad-free experience?
I’m not a heavy Twitch user so maybe I’m wrong but I’m struggling to think of a killer feature of Twitch or an aspect of the overall experience that’s better than YouTube Live videos.
At least with YouTube I can watch ad-free with a Premium plan.
> why doesn’t an Amazon prime subscription remove ads? Is there even a way to buy an ad-free experience?
First of all, an Amazon Prime subscription soon won't even remove ads from Amazon Video, so why would it be any different for Twitch?
Second of all, a channel subscription (through Amazon Prime or otherwise) removes ads from that channel. If you want an ad free experience across the whole site, Twitch Turbo is $11.99 USD.
Prime USED to remove ads site-wide, but that was shuttered. Turbo will probably go away sometime in the future as well, as it's mostly there to offer a product for developing markets where Prime doesn't exist yet.
I don't subscribe to any channels because Turbo exists; they probably don't like that.
> I’m wrong but I’m struggling to think of a killer feature of Twitch or an aspect of the overall experience that’s better than YouTube Live videos.
Discoverability, content creators and community.
Live streaming is a second class citizen on youtube, and as such it is hidden under dropdowns, the live streams aren't always on the top of your followers, live recommendations are worse than useless and the big creators that move to youtube do like Ninja with Mixer, with a big fat paycheck to justify the loss of viewership and community.
You can't show female-presenting cleavage, for one. They change their "attire policy" on a near-weekly basis.
Is it exploitative? Empowering? Toxic? Who knows! Everyone argues about everything.
Twitch is ban happy with anything even remotely controversial. Things that can be suggestive or comments that can be interpreted as offensive will garner a ban. And they hate anything even remotely sex-related.
Honestly, this stuff needs to move P2P. Platforms are indecisive and fickle. Just a month ago, they flip-flopped on their policy in just two days [1]. And it happens time and time again.
I don't blame the ad networks (after all Twitter had all of the world government and news orgs plus sex and nudity). I blame the Twitch leadership.
If you follow Twitch, the entire leadership is embroiled in the kind of drama you'd expect in a middle or high school.
The community is moving to mostly Kick [2] and somewhat to YouTube Gaming.
> You can't show female-presenting cleavage, for one. They change their "attire policy" on a near-weekly basis…. And they hate anything even remotely sex-related.
It seems incomplete to complain about this without also noting that Twitch (along with almost every other social media platform) has increasingly turned into a lead generation platform for OnlyFans. The rules keep changing because the OnlyFans streamers will find whatever line is drawn and absolutely spam the platform with whatever drives traffic to OF.
Which suggests that a less prudish content policy at Twitch might have kept OnlyFans from ever being created in the first place. They literally drove those consumers away to other platforms, squandering their early and dominant position in the market.
During this past Christmas Twitch "meta" I could not even link clips to friends because it would bring up "related" popular clips of what was basically soft core porn. It goes beyond what we want to watch. It affects how I can use and interact with the service to other people.
Camgirl sites already existed before Twitch, let alone OF. It’s hard to see how turning Twitch into another camgirl site would have been a better strategy than creating a streaming platform for watching people play video games, which was an entirely new niche. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to complain when platforms that were never meant for porn get relentlessly spammed by camgirls.
I think this kind of thing is far far overblown, for the vast majority of streamers these kinds of "internet discourse" dramas don't affect them in any meaningful way. Internet drama is just fuel for the blogspam.
It's all money anything else is rage baiting, kick's pull is the revenue split they'll never be able to maintain if they reach critical mass and the policies that get streamers to leave are the ad/revenue split changes.
Hate anything remotely sex-related? Are we talking about Twitch? They have changed their policy a billion times because they seem hell-bent on avoiding censoring sexual content as much as the possibly can. It’s the users that inevitably find a way to push the boundaries so far that they are forced do something, that is usually so half-assed that it doesn’t change much. At this point Twitch is getting closer to a cam site that funnels people to OnlyFans than it is to its gaming roots.
Kick allows sexual content and gambling content. Both of those are worth quite a bit for the content creators, the first of which is monetized by driving people to OnlyFans, and the second of which is monetized through incentives and partnerships with gambling sites.
Not to say that you are off, but what people here seem to be glossing over if not wholly overlooking is that Kick is entirely backed by founders of an online casino (quick searching will turn up very quickly who).
"partnerships" and "intertwined" that I'm seeing on this submission feel like they are understating it: Kick is owned by a casino.
A Harris Heller clip of a pretty thoughtful take, IMO:
It is more tricky to do p2p because not all viewers use stationary PCs nowadays.
There are mobiles or wifi users, who cannot be the rebroadcaster nodes. Bittorenty style delivery maybe will work, just with higher delays.
Besides the ad policies, the Twitch revenue split for subscriptions has been changing over time. Historically it defaulted to 50/50 and most streamers of any decent size audience would have a contract to be granted 70/30 split. However, the 70/30 split has been phased out and today nearly no streamer on the platform has it anymore. This is a huge difference for streamers. The CEO of Twitch was handing out 70/30 split "coupons" as a prize in a live event[1], it's a big deal.
Besides subscription revenue, Twitch is constantly battling to reduce other sources of income, like branded sponsorships. Last year they announced significant restrictions on streamers displaying branded content with sponsors.[2] While these rules were soon reverted, it suggests Twitch is in a fight for its life. All indications point that this is going to continue to be a problem in the future. In short, streamers need to deal with the ads because their revenue from other sources is constantly at threat.
1: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/twitch-ceo-surprises-s...
2: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/7/23752437/twitch-new-ad-rul...