Twitch Considering Huge Pay Cut For Streamers?
Mike Sanders / 3 years ago
It’s hardly any secret that while Twitch still remains the most popular streaming platform, in the last few years, it has started to face some pretty stiff and serious competition. – Similar to platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, Twitch does seem to be going through a moderate period of stagnation and, by proxy of management, general cost-cutting measures. – A factor that has perhaps been reflected in the (what I consider frankly bizarre) decision to end support for the desktop application at the end of this month.
Following a report via Gizmodo, however, Twitch is reportedly considering a new possibility of making more money. And if the source is accurate, then this move is going to be exceptionally unpopular among its community! – Put simply, and although 100% pending confirmation, it would appear that Twitch may be set to, or at least are very much considering, taking a significantly bigger cut of the profit their streamers make from subscriptions!
Twitch Considers A Huge Pay Cut for Streamers!
Generally speaking, when someone subscribes to a Twitch steamer, the individual earns roughly 70% of the total respected value. So, although this is not entirely accurate, just for the sake of simplicity, let’s say that a subscription costs $10. From this, under the current system, the streamer earns $7. – Simple enough, right? And more so, a seemingly fair figure given that the streamer does all the work while Twitch merely provides the platform and audience.
In order to boost flagging profits, however, sources reportedly close to Twitch have said that the platform is strongly considering changing this from 70% to 50%. In other words, from subscription earnings, streamers could see their own individual profits fall by 20%. A pretty substantial figure and especially for those who are currently just about eeking a living out the platform!
The only potential benefit that this could have, however, is that if Twitch does cut streamer’s profit share, they may, as something of an olive branch, significantly relax the current rather stringent rules about them hosting themselves and/or posting directly related content on other platforms.
Even with this in mind though, I simply can’t think for one second that this is going to go down well with their community. And, especially so, those I mentioned above who may have only just cracked into quitting their ‘day’ job to go into full time streaming. – If this does come to pass, however, there will still clearly be workarounds and especially so via the medium of donations and platforms such as Patreon which Twitch (and technically Amazon) can’t get their hands on! – For generic users though, this is definitely within the lead-balloon territory of public relations.
What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
