Shortly after the recent change in monetization policy on the Twitch strip platform, the Amazon service attempted to regain the confidence of the strimers by holding a series of meetings at the TwitCon event.
Twitch representative Mary Kiss, who spent the weekend with Strimers, said that Mary, who herself was an active participant in the platform, understood the mood of the users: Striming is a real job for many who can feed their children and pay rent.
Last month, the service announced that the payment model would change as of next June. If now the top strimers receive 70% of the revenue from their broadcasts, relatively soon the revenue will be 50/50, as will the less popular strimers. The rate will be reduced after the first $100,000, which is not a very good incentive to increase activity.
Twitch emphasizes that the company aims to achieve financial viability in order to ensure the platform's profitability over time, despite the enormous costs of supporting technologies that provide 2.5 million hours of live broadcasts in the world on a daily basis.
During TwitchCon, representatives of the company and the strimers tried to come to an understanding — some 20 panels and sessions were organized to learn how to earn more money, develop their own brands, and gain popularity to attract sponsors. Some short-term courses explained how to raise the status on the site, thereby being able to publish advertising and sell their content by subscription, followed by monetization.
The number of stars making hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars on the platform has increased markedly since the beginning of the pandemic to over 7 million active strimers. The company has already reduced the minimum amount of withdrawal from $100 to $50 and has presented a number of products that allow users to raise revenues. However, many believe that it increases its own revenues at the expense of the strimers.
Although the recent changes concern only a small number of Twitch strimers that generate most of the site's revenues, there are many who are unhappy, as the platform is no longer able to earn more even in theory.
The 23,000 Twitch users asked the platform to move to 70/30 for all strimers, but the vice president of Mike Minton stated that Amazon required a return, as it did for any business, although he did not report when it was the head company that expected to make a profit from Twitch.
Twitch's initiative to integrate more advertising is criticized by many strimmers because it is not convenient to combine it with live broadcasts. While the company is working on ways to make advertising less obsessive and allow it to be missed if it wants to. In turn, the strimers claim that this is not in line with their vision of the situation, as it leads to a loss of interest on the part of the audience.