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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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  • ShadowShadooyep commented  ·   ·  Report

    This would add a very interesting category to be easily found!

  • zayshaa commented  ·   ·  Report

    4,250 votes and 245 comments (easily the most for this suggestions section by 3x), and yet still no game development catagory. Come on twitch it would take you 10 mins! Please? the time spent by the people trying to get you to do it could have gotten it done many times over. you even have a graphic already from when you had a game dev category before! PLEASE!?!?!

  • GalassoX commented  ·   ·  Report

    The question is why was this not?

    A category of video game or software development in general should be implemented since if there are categories of video games or programs as such, because there is not one for the developers of these games or programs, so we have better support when developing them.

  • stuyksoft commented  ·   ·  Report

    I program for a living but also do game development on the side. This category would really help with getting away from the 24/7 Chicken Streams, Volcano Activity Streams, and other streams that have nothing to do with what I'm working on inside of the Science & Technology category. Please make this happen we want to watch, raid, and talk to like-minded people who create games!

  • khadyko commented  ·   ·  Report

    How is it possible that a platform (oriented for games) has a "Hot Tub" category with bikini girls, but not a single one for game developers? What a shame!

  • Csaki01 commented  ·   ·  Report

    And Twitch is staying silent... it's almost like they have something against game developers...

  • zededgeart commented  ·   ·  Report

    Created a Twitch account just to vote. These devs deserve their category.

  • SorrowsTale commented  ·   ·  Report

    Dear Twitch,
    Perfect is the enemy of the good. If its a slightly square peg and you just have almost round holes, dont for the sake of neatness disenfranchise all the people that had and still want a "game development" category.

    If you have alternate plans but are not ready to reveal them, please let the community know rather than staying quiet on the issue.

    Kind regards,
    A Big Twitch Fan and Streamer.

  • Cealvan commented  ·   ·  Report

    We would greatly benefit if you let us have our own category rather than be forced to stay under the catch all of "science and technology"

  • python273 commented  ·   ·  Report

    I asked about this problem on TwitchDev Discord. An admin of this Discord (but not affiliated with Twitch as far as I understand) Dist said:

    "there is discussions internally at Twitch on category policy and what should or shouldn't be included"

    So hopefully we'll see a response from Twitch in the next 1-2 weeks. For how long you can discuss it, right?

  • MoPHL commented  ·   ·  Report

    On a platform built on the idea of people playing games, there isn't a category for the ones making them.
    That's pretty dumb.

  • HannBanans commented  ·   ·  Report

    The fact that this is still unacknowledged by Twitch is beyond me. The game development community on Twitch means so much to me, we all support each other and help each other and compete in game jams with each other - imagine if we were all easier to reach in a specific game dev category. Seeing game dev streamers makes the hobby and profession much more palpable for those that are in it. I didn’t know there was a game developer community myself on Twitch until finding AdamCYounis on *YouTube*, NOT on Twitch. PLEASE, Twitch, please give us a category to call home, your platform quite literally wouldn’t exist without game developers.

  • StraightUpGruntled commented  ·   ·  Report

    I made a comment about this earlier a couple months ago, but I feel the need to do it again, as we still haven't received a category.

    Twitch is literally a platform created initially for gaming, and to stream playing games. Games even get there own category, so the fact that game developers, those who literally make the games to supply Twitches content, don't get at least a category is weird to me, and at least 4000 other people as well.

    Many people also aren't aware there is a Game Development tag, making it hard to find game devs as many often aren't using the tag, because they assume it should be a category.

    Don't judge the amount of game devs on twitch by your existing tag. Look at this thread, realize there are 4000 game devs hoping for a category, and then add for those who don't even know of this thread yet.

  • DeadRobotDev commented  ·   ·  Report

    4000 votes! Which will come first, 5000, or Twitch responding? There is no solution to figure out. Give us back the category we had in the first place until you removed it for no reason.

    We don't want an annoucement. We don't want a blog post. We want a category where people can find us, and we'll do the rest.

  • testdrive64 commented  ·   ·  Report

    It would be a great new opporunity for the community ;-)

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