The world’s largest live broadcasting platform, Twitch, owned by Amazon, came to the fore today with news that will anger both publishers and viewers. According to the news based on internal sources by Bloomberg, Twitch plans to make significant and radical changes in its partnership program.
With these changes, Twitch plans to simply show more ads to viewers and pay less commissions to streamers. While it was stated that the changes in question could come this summer, it was emphasized that the changes to be made were not fully planned and that the plans could be thrown away before these changes come. The changes that Twitch was said to be working on were as follows:
Possible changes to the Twitch affiliate program:
- Streamers will be able to post more ads.
- Revenue deduction for subscriptions will be reduced from 70%/30% to 50%/50% for premium publishers.
- A new tier system will be introduced for subscriptions, criteria will be determined for accessing tiers (Details not provided).
- Twitch will lift partner exclusivity restrictions. Thus, broadcasters will be able to broadcast on YouTube or Facebook.
With these changes, Twitch will offer the benefits of more advertising and freedom from exclusivity as a counter offer while capturing a portion of publishers’ subscription revenue. However, publishers who want to earn the same income with these conditions will have to choose either to bore their viewers by showing more ads or to spend more time opening separate broadcasts on YouTube or Facebook.