Twitch, the main streaming platform for video games and other types of entertainment, has had a long season of ups and downs. The successive changes in the distribution of money between platform and streamers, economic doubts and the apparent drop in audience have raised doubts about its reliability. “There was a growing feeling that the streamers “They didn’t feel like we were taking care of them,” acknowledges Mike Minton, head of Monetization at Twitch, in this interview given by videoconference to EL PAÍS.
Since March, with a new chief executive, Dan Clancy, the company has been trying to reestablish ties and trust with its community of creators. “The best example has been Clancy in the van, who spent three weeks driving around the southeastern United States meeting with streamers and listening to them,” says Minton. Clancy’s Twitter/X account is a trail of cute photos along with streamersboth Americans and Latin Americans.
Twitch’s effort has also reached its community in Spain. According to company data shared with EL PAÍS, the streaming Spanish is the fastest growing language on Twitch. “From 2019 to 2022, Twitch viewers multiplied by six, and Spanish went from the seventh most viewed language to the second, only behind English.”
The pandemic was the turning point in that growth. A bunch of youtubers Celebrities like Auronplay or elRubius had moved their main channel to Twitch. And with the help of Ibai Llanos, the main creator of Twitch in Spanish, the live network grew and captured a new generation of fans. Proof of that success, and the attention it deserves, is that Dan Clancy visited the Ibai Llanos channel to explain why some technical errors had harmed his numbers in the last evening. Last June, in Madrid, a boxing event between creators called The evening It was the largest live show in the history of that platform, with almost 3.5 million simultaneous viewers.
1. But is Twitch viewership falling?
“We are going down” in Spain, the famous woman said on her Twitch channel. streamer Cristinini, about the platform’s audiences in Spain. Cristinini responded to her audience, who wrote to her via chat, but a clip of a couple of minutes went extremely viral on X. That audience has not completely disappeared, according to Cristinini. Many were Latin American and in recent years Mexican or Argentine creators have grown a lot. But on Twitch they admit that the audience problem not only affects the streamers Spanish people.
🟣Cristinini talks about the drop in viewers on Twitch Spain:
“We have all been burned a lot and it shows.”
“We’re going down, beating each other brutally.” pic.twitter.com/zdJd34BhqO
— Movistar eSports (@MovistareSports) October 5, 2023
With the end of confinement and the return to life outside, Twitch has suffered. The live ones are more intimate and personal than a simple YouTube video. Live chat and the feeling of community are the key to the platform. If there is less free time at home, such a platform will suffer: “All content creators have been aware of this,” says Minton. “Especially on Twitch, where you know that people’s free time is precious. Since we have returned to normal and the viewers had less time, the streamers They noticed it.”
Clancy, the CEO, admitted the same in his talk with Ibai: “Of course Twitch is not at the scale it was during the pandemic, but we are not the only platform that is not at the same level. So we saw a lot of growth and now a lot of people have gone back to their lives, they can’t come to Twitch as regularly anymore. Twitch should be a platform that people should use even if they don’t have much time. There are people who, if they can’t spend the same amount of time on Twitch, then sometimes they end up disappearing. Our goal should be to help them maintain that connection with Twitch, despite being short on time,” he said.
Despite these statements from Milton and Clancy, the data that the platform shares only indicates more growth: “On average, there are more than 35 million daily users on Twitch, up from 31 in 2022,” says a spokeswoman. Confronted with the statements of their bosses, they only explain it in terms of the variability that large companies can suffer. streamers and that these data are global.
Minton also does not want to give more importance to fluctuations: “We are quite happy with where we are. When you have these big moments of growth, you’re always a little worried about what’s going to happen next, and I would say that, for the most part, we’re pretty happy with where we are in terms of what we’ve retained, what we’ve learned. streamers have retained in their communities,” he adds.
2. We will take care of you
As head of Monetization, your big concern is that streamers Keep coming in and the distributions with the platform are clear. “Our focus is how to help streamers to earn more money with the same audience size. One of the metrics I always look at to normalize the difference between big and small income is how much money they make per viewer hour. In Europe they largely earn around 20% more per hour with advertising. As audiences are not growing as fast or in some cases shrinking, we really have a big job to do to make sure their earnings continue to grow,” he adds.
The platform’s recent big announcement It’s a program called Partner Plus, which is another milestone for the streamers medium. Twitch has two large categories: affiliates and partners (in English, partners). To become a member and start charging something, it only takes eight hours on seven different days, and with an average of three viewers. The partners They need an average of 75 spectators. In June Twitch announced the partners plus, who need 350 paying subscribers for three consecutive months. Each of these categories gives better economic benefits in sharing with Twitch.
Minton’s goal is to create a clear roadmap, so that streamers know what to expect at each stage of your career. “Not everyone wants to make a living on Twitch, but a lot of people have that goal and we want to support them as they move forward. Some of the most important things we want to give beginners are milestones to follow. It’s like unlocking emotes [emojis más sofisticados]: the more subscribers you have, the more spaces for emotes you will have online. We have deliberately made it very easy to become an affiliate and start making money with the service and then for many streamers, the road to becoming partners is a very long journey. What we are looking at is how we can offer achievement programs, more intermediate steps and where the community can come together around those moments,” he explains.
One of these helps is to collaborate with brands to sponsor smaller creators: “Brands tend to work with streamers large because that reduces your overhead, but we can help spread the word to others because we have more data about them. We can help package and bring to brands a set of streamers More smalls. It is a solution in terms of sponsorship,” he says.
3. But if you are Spanish, I don’t know you
Spanish is the second community on Twitch, but Minton only knows Ibai. It’s not his job, but Auronplay or theGrefg or the recent Kings League event are phenomena with global impact. Not for Minton: “The only Spaniard that comes to mind is Ibai. The language barrier is tough. He is the one that immediately comes to mind.”
Minton also does not explain why the Spanish community is the one that has created something like The evening or other events. As an example in English, he cites the Streamer Awards, created by Cutie Cinderella just weeks after the success of the Esland Awards, created by theGrefg.
They also do not have a very clear explanation as to why the Spanish language is booming. “A few days ago, we were talking about the growth of Twitch and looking back, and Jacob Woodsey, our design director, recognized that communities are global and that they were really focused on ensuring that there were no barriers between communities. In this case, language is the connection between streamers from Mexico and Spain, for example. The service was built on that, as if a gaming community’s view of the world could be global.”
4. What if they go to other platforms?
One of the main dangers for platforms like Twitch is the flight of talent to YouTube or new ones like Kick. Ibai told Clancy that he still got along The evening to the TV Is Minton worried? “Generally not. We are happy for the streamers when they find opportunities that work for them. A few years ago, it was certainly a very different environment in terms of the relationship between creators and services. We’ve now come to recognize their ambitions for growth and building an audience across multiple services, and that’s fine. That’s the way it is, whether it’s TikTok or other live streaming services, that’s what the streamers they want and what they need to do.”
Twitch has just announced that it will allow live streams be viewed simultaneously on other platforms.
You can follow EL PAÍS Technology in Facebook and x or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
#Twitch #aspires #regain #lost #trust #streamers #feel #cared