A brand new article has come out that discusses the issues within the industry, and ever changing industry of content creation and live-streaming, one that has Amazon’s streaming platform Twitch struggling mightily and making changes that impacts their streamers just to keep things moving.
Those changes have been met with a ton of backlash and criticism, and a recent article from Wired says that success on platforms such as Twitch, no longer comes on the platform itself, leaving many streamers to step back from Twitch.
From revenue split changes to a focus on grinding in order to hit milestones, Twitch has been the epicenter of industry hiccups and burnout.
“I think for smaller broadcasters and medium-sized broadcasters, things have changed in the last two months,” streamer and agency owner Devin Nash says. “They are starting to consider multi-streaming and alternative platform options, and they’re starting to realize that this old story they’ve been told about discovery on Twitch is not really true.”
In fact, more and more people who ask ‘How to Grow on Twitch?’ are now utilizing platforms outside of Twitch to do so.
“Without TikTok, I would never have grown just on Twitch. Point blank, period,” Twitch partner Shawn Gilhuly says. Irritation about hosting’s removal derives from this struggle: It was generally accepted that being hosted on another’s channel led to more viewers and a shot at a spot on Twitch’s front page. With discovery on the platform so difficult, the removal feels like, at the very least, a misguided priority for the company.”
Discovery is a huge issue, and one we try to address here at Disko, but it is also impacting the business side, from revenue to profits and from influencer marketing to advertising and sponsorships.
“As more streamers have come to Twitch, many of them tell us that it’s gotten more competitive to grow viewers,” says Twitch spokesperson Samantha Faught. “Improving discovery to enable streamers to grow their communities is one of our top priorities as a company.” Twitch adds that partners can now livestream on other services and platforms “to give them the flexibility to further build their brands and bring new viewers into their communities on Twitch.”
Whether or not Twitch listens and actually implements changes is yet to be seen.