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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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  • KisaSatoma commented  ·   ·  Report

    ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ I give burger to support game devs
    Also for the future of Gamedevs as a whole!
    ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ give game devs your energy!
    So we can get more Developers Building games, building programs, building things!! gathering more views and business for twtich!

  • Recypher commented  ·   ·  Report

    Do this, but like, actually do it or I'll cry.

  • luigifan64d commented  ·   ·  Report

    ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Give game devs your support, Twitch.

  • RiverMakes commented  ·   ·  Report

    ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Gamedev category or we're not friends anymore

  • VinceRants commented  ·   ·  Report

    I initially found GoPirateSoftware via the Game Dev category, later meeting again at TwitchCon and becoming IRL friends! This would NEVER have been possible without having a dedicated Game Dev category, what GoPirateSoftware streams, and the content I'm interested in watching as another dev in the community. Science & Tech category has too much bloat being a catch-all that doesn't help anyone, streamer or viewer. It is too broad and vague.

  • SkyStormKing commented  ·   ·  Report

    ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ I give burger to support game devs

  • PirateSoftware commented  ·   ·  Report

    ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Give game devs your energy, chat.

  • VolkillerGames commented  ·   ·  Report

    while in theory this is nice there is a reason it was taken away. we have more reach under art and science and tech then we did when gamedev was its own category because the browse page would just drop that to the bottom of everything. In the end that is why there is now a Game Development tag you are meant to use on the site because that means you can stream under art/S&T or even get your game added and stream under your game with the tag and be found. so really we just need filter by tag to be known about more then it is atm. We all had this same issue when they had then dropped Creative then gamedev as sections really creative was the best time for gamedevs cause it ranked higher on the browse page But overall we are getting back to that avg with S&T so i feel changing it would just lower us all once again because you would have people still streaming in art S&T etc so what we really need to push for is better tag discovery because the way it works is different on parts of the site limiting people overall from seeing all streams marked as Game Dev / 3d modeling / etc

  • GerGauss commented  ·   ·  Report

    Yes please! Small indie studios/devs could really use this :)

  • BurgosGames commented  ·   ·  Report

    Let's go. They shouldn't have taken it out. We need better representation!

  • pumpkinkiller95 commented  ·   ·  Report

    Yes, This can help the community to easily find game developers and for people who are interested they can also find it. vote +1

  • SnutiHQ commented  ·   ·  Report

    Yes, please! Game dev streaming is quite different, and should have it's own category!

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