Although Twitch’s new Partner Plus program, which gives streamers an increased share of their subscription revenues, was seen as an olive branch by many in the streaming community, creators should probably take a second look at the company’s sparkling initiative before starting to cheer, industry experts say.
Last Thursday, Twitch announced that streamers who qualified for its new Partner Plus initiative would get a 70 / 30 split of revenue from subscriptions, which are donated by their viewers. Most streamers earn a 50/50 split. As explained by Twitch, those inducted into the program would receive 70% of their subscriptions for one year until they reach their first $US100,000. Once streamers hit that amount, their subscription share reduces to 50%, which is the standard split for most streamers.
While it was clear from the get-go that not all streamers would qualify for the program — requirements include being a Twitch partner and having at least 350 monthly recurring subscriptions — many were outraged to hear that it could be as little as 2.5%, or about 1,066.
That’s the number that Twitch analytics service Streams Charts came up with after analysing how many Twitch partners were active, or who have streamed at least once, in the past three months and how many of those had more than 350 monthly subscriptions. Out of the more than 71,000 Twitch partners, Streams Charts told Gizmodo, only about 42,000 were active in the past three months. Of those, only 1,066 had at least 350 monthly subscriptions.
When reached for comment via email on Tuesday morning, Twitch did not answer Gizmodo’s questions related to Streams Charts analysis or say whether it was accurate, providing only general data on Twitch monetisation.
“The only official/confirmed public data that is available on Twitch’s monetisation products is the following: Each month, over 1M streamers earn revenue on Twitch, including earnings from subs, Bits, and ads,” Ashley Lloyd, Twitch’s EMEA communication manager, said.
Not everyone believed Streams Charts’ data, though. Some folks on Twitter stated that Streams Charts’ estimates of subscriptions are not always accurate, which means that more streamers could qualify for Partner Plus. Babenko acknowledged that Streams Charts is not known for its subscriptions data, noting that the platform’s system doesn’t consider things like offline subscriptions and certain auto-renewed subscriptions.
Yet, Babenko stated that the data discrepancies mainly exist with large streamers — who would qualify for Partner Plus, nonetheless — because they have thousands of subscriptions.
“The data is pretty accurate for medium-sized and small partners, with a slight abnormality,” the Streams Charts product manager explained. “To be maximally honest, for our ‘2.5% research,’ these numbers can be considered as estimated values (of course only Twitch knows the real ones), but they are close enough to reality, as actually mentioned by the streamers.”
Twitch has faced intense pushback from its creators in recent weeks after releasing new restrictive ad rules, which it promptly scrapped after streamers criticised them and said they would negatively affect their bottom line. In recent days, the platform suffered another blow when it lost two of its biggest creators, xQc and Amouranth, to rival platform Kick.
The New York Times broke the story about the deal xQc, whose real name is Félix Lengyel, made with Kick, a streaming platform backed by online gambling companies, on Friday. xQc’s contract is worth $US70 million, with $US30 million in additional incentives that could push the total to about $US100 million. Just two days later, hot tub queen Amouranth, or Kaitlyn Siragusa, also announced she was going to Kick.
In a staged video on Twitter, Siragusa stated she was looking for a million-dollar contract like Lengyel’s.
“Hey so, the $US100-million deals have started,” she said. “Can I get one of those?”
The answer would appear to be “yes,” though the amount of Siragusa’s contract is currently unknown.