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Create a Game Development Category.

Creative and IRL used to be categories on Twitch. Everything that wasn't games was in Creative. This means everything from Bob Ross to ASMR (let's be real that's the same thing.) was all in one place and entirely unsearchable.|

Twitch broke up Creative and IRL into a bunch of new and rad categories to help discoverability. This included Music, Art, Beauty, Food, Just Chatting, Tabletops, ASMR, Science & Technology, and others. This category splitting really helped a lot of smaller communities grow. It was easier to find new and interesting streamers because you could now discover them in an otherwise bloated and unsearchable wasteland.

For a brief period of time Game Development was also a category right after Creative was brought down. We had a huge amount of new viewers in that category but Twitch removed it after only two weeks. We were averaging 7.1 new followers per hour under Game Development.

Science & Technology however did not gain any benefit from this. It's become another catch all like Creative was. Weed growing, animal cams, earthquake sims, and a few programmers mixed in. We average 2.8 new followers per hour in this category because nobody knows what it is.

If you search Game Development on Twitch right now the category doesn't show up, neither do streams with the tag of Game Development, in fact... nothing shows up. If you search for Science "AND" Technology you get nothing. You actually have to search for Science "&" Technology. This compounds the discoverability issue and makes the category even worse for developers. We need Game Development back.

It's a simple change but it can help build a lot of new communities on Twitch. It can also make more money for indie devs and Twitch at the same time. At the end of the day I feel incredibly lucky with the success we've had on Twitch. Because of this platform and our community we will never need a publisher or investors. We get to own 100% of our studio.

I want that replicated for game devs that come after us.

This thread was posted publicly on Twitter and has so far received a very large amount of community support.
https://twitter.com/PirateSoftware/status/1361911034219425792
4,731 votes

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  • KarmicKhamel commented  ·   ·  Report

    Twitch can you please at list respond to this ask? This is a reasonable, well documented, and likely profitable ask from your community and you have basically ignored it sense it was posted in February.
  • DeadRobotDev commented  ·   ·  Report

    @thatn00b_ The problem with programming and why we specifically want Game Development as a separate category, is cause it encompasses more than just programming. It's art, music, etc. And we all used to have one place before they got rid of communities and then the Game Development category.
  • thatn00b__ commented  ·   ·  Report

    I'd even love a Programming Category (or maybe if those are mixed in)

    But if not - a Game-Dev Category is a good start.
  • NikolaiL commented  ·   ·  Report

    Funniest thing is, we used to have this. then twitch decided to punch every single thing on planet earth to same category. TAGS ain't cutting it.
  • Viking_Blonde commented  ·   ·  Report

    This will cost nothing to do and will help re-ignite the game dev community on Twitch
  • TheGrumpyGameDev commented  ·   ·  Report

    I implore you twitch.... we can even do the game development in hot tubs if you really need us to.
  • Erozbey commented  ·   ·  Report

    Game Development category was supposed to open long before most of the unimportant categories.

  • Rhomita commented  ·   ·  Report

    Come on Twitch! It's probably a 5 minutes task. Low-hanging fruit!
  • RoseRainblood commented  ·   ·  Report

    Please bring this category back. Seeing this go ignored especially with the size and dedication of its community is disheartening. It makes it seem like all the endless hard work us devs put in isn’t valued.
  • DeltaStormZ commented  ·   ·  Report

    This is a game streaming site, it should be common sense that game development should be a game category
  • Alzar_tv commented  ·   ·  Report

    hot tub streamers got their own category before we got game dev back. Nice Twitch
  • mellonite commented  ·   ·  Report

    Would love to stream in this category, most people, especially new users, find streams by categories, not tags. Would be such a step up for discoverability and could get new people into game development as a whole.
  • LordFuture commented  ·   ·  Report

    My understanding was that it started as Justin.tv and site allowed anyone to broadcast most things. Gaming was just a category.

    It became so big it was spun off and called twitch.tv. Eventually it eclipsed justin.tv, and so it was shut down.

    Game development wasn't even a thing.
  • 2_Left_Thumbs commented  ·   ·  Report

    WHY does this not exist yet!? It should have been the 2nd thing they added, after gaming itself.
  • Virus610 commented  ·   ·  Report

    It's frustrating to see that there hasn't been any acknowledgement from Twitch on this after over 3 months, on the third-highest voted item ever (While #1, #2, #4, #6, and #8 are all under consideration; Some of them getting responses within <1 month).

    A lot of good can come from Game Development being easier to find on Twitch:
    * Encouraging people to stream Game Development: Allowing developers to monetize/socialize the development process would lead to more games for people to play/stream.
    * Getting realtime feedback on the games being developed: Means higher quality games for everybody
    * Allows fans to give a voice to potential issues like inclusion and diversity: Need I say more?

    Please at least dignify the game dev community with a response. We're a bunch of coders, artists, musicians, storytellers, etc. who feel like Twitch doesn't want us on their platform, and I really want to believe that this isn't actually the case.
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