Change revenue split between streamers and lower payout minimums
I believe these recommendations combined would positively make a huge impact for every streamer and supporter.
Change the payout split between streamers and Twitch. Right now affiliates and most partners only get a 50% split from a Twitch subscriptions ($2.50 USD). I would like to see all streamers get a minimum 70% revenue split from subscriptions with a higher revenue split for all partners 80%. Currently both Facebook and YouTube streamers get a 70% split from subscriptions (and they have the option to create custom subscriber tiers with Youtube).
In addition, I would like to see Twitch lower its payout minimum which is currently $100 USD to $10 - $20 USD. A $100 USD payout is the equivalent to 40 subscriptions not including bits or ad revenue. For the smaller streamers to benefit from that financial support a viewer gives them, they need to be able to actually receive it in a reasonable amount of time.
To put this in perspective: Amazon Affiliates monthly payout minimum is 10 USD (they also give the option to pay out with gift cards) and Patreon's monthly payout minimum is only 3 USD.
Hey everyone -
Firstly, we want to thank SaltyWyvern for posting this request, and the 22k+ of you who have supported it with your votes, comments, and shares. We have been blown away by the response to this post, and have been carefully considering it for the better part of the last year. As there are actually two asks in this post, we will address them individually.
For the primary request of increasing the revenue share split to 70/30, the standard revenue share for subscriptions is 50/50, and we do not have plans to change the standard revenue share. We understand that this is disappointing for many of you, but we’d like to provide some reasoning behind the decision. To quote our President, Dan Clancy, from the blog we posted today:
“When we first established a 50/50 revenue share split, it was to signal that we’re in this together. You all do the amazing work you do to create great content, engage with your audience, and grow communities. On our side of the partnership, it’s our responsibility to make continuous investments in the products and people that make your growth possible.
As you probably heard by now, we’re in the middle of rolling out the largest change to payouts in years by cutting the payout threshold in half to $50. This is an important middle step that will help streamers put money in their pockets now, while getting us closer to our goal of same day payouts and lower thresholds.
Investments like these are paying off for streamers. Products like Prime Subs, Community Gifting, Hype Train, and the Ads Incentive Program, to name a few, have driven an increase of 27% more streamer revenue per viewer hour every year over the last five years. This means the same viewer hour now earns you three times more money than it did five years ago, on average. Our investments into your monetization options have already and continue to put more money into streamers’ pockets than 20% more subs revenue share would have.
Prime Subs often get lost in the conversation when it comes to revenue share. For Prime Subs, we pay streamers the same amount they’d receive for a regular subscription even though it is included as an added benefit of their Prime subscription. Combined with other monetization products, Prime Subs increase your effective revenue share by approximately 15%, to about 65% total. This number varies by streamer size and location, but subscription revenue share is not the full picture on revenue share for streamers.
Lastly, we have to talk about the cost of our service. Delivering high definition, low latency, always available live video to nearly every corner of the world is expensive. Using the published rates from Amazon Web Services’ Interactive Video Service (IVS) — which is essentially Twitch video — live video costs for a 100 CCU streamer who streams 200 hours a month are more than $1000 per month. We don’t typically talk about this because, frankly, you shouldn’t have to think about it. We’d rather you focus on doing what you do best. But to fully answer the question of “why not 70/30,” ignoring the high cost of delivering the Twitch service would have meant giving you an incomplete answer.“
As mentioned above, we recently started a rollout for reducing the minimum payout threshold to $50. Although this does not fully meet the request of $10-20 today, we will continue exploring ways to bring your hard-earned money to you faster, and more efficiently and aim to continue to lower the payout threshold in the future.
While we are declining this request, it’s still crucial to know that the primary value of sharing your feedback on UserVoice is to have your voices heard and suggestions considered. We will not always be able to provide the desired outcome, but it’s important to us to be transparent and open when we can, and we will be focusing on providing more consistent updates on UserVoice as time goes on.
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slothsHere commented
A revenue increase is most definitely necessary for the future. The sooner the better. Streamers should not be losing HALF of their income every single payout due to that subscription % - It’s ridiculous. Something needs to change.
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CloudFluffyou commented
as a small streamer with like 2 subs, yes
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BishoujoStar commented
Creators are what make platforms like Twitch. It would be nothing without them. Creators should be treated as such and get this better split.
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sp4rt4n1990 commented
It would definitely help the smaller streamers to keep going
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GayBrownies commented
As a UK based and small streamer with disabilities, since the switch to local currency’s has come in I’ve struggled to get any form of decent payouts. People aren’t gifting because it’s cheaper, it’s just that simple. Viewers will sub if they want and gift if they want, making things lower in cost isn’t going to work. Lower the cut, you CAN afford it. The temptation to just open a Patreon and leave the affiliate program because of this change has been very tempting lately
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peubzera commented
Vote up and I agree...
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DoctorSwellman commented
I would 100% stream more if I had a better revenue split, real talk
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Goggs commented
If Bezos gave $8.6m per month direct to Twitch (the equivalent of what he 'earns' in an hour), then content creators could easily pocket 100% of takings and Twitch would still be turning a profit.
C'mon Jeffrey babez. Get the checkbook out!
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Shanghaid commented
First of all: There is a very large percentage of Twitch streamers who simply do not benefit from the system in the way that it currently stands. Instead of motivating users to push monetisation, it actually tends to have the opposite effect and discourages a lot of people to stop trying. When paired with the changes to local subs, and the fact that the sub count required in order to force a payout to be quite high, this can be a tall order for a lot of content creators to achieve consistently. In addition, compared to your biggest competitors, the payout take is pretty harsh. YouTube, for example, give the creator 55% from Ad Revenue, 70% from the Membership Feature (which is basically subs) and 70% from the superchat feature.
The payout system as a whole can definitely be better. Much better.
Second of all: Ding, 3000!
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cloudredxiii commented
90% split and no minimum payout imho
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kennakennz commented
I have $60 just sitting in my Twitch account atm that I could really use. I should be able to pull out the money whenever I need it. Stop gatekeeping my community’s money!
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JeriRose commented
As someone who is disabled and chronically ill - twitch is a big source of income for me as I can't work due to my conditions, I also live in Ireland which means with the currency difference between payout is so little after everything.
Twitch has enough money to give us a bigger cut and lose absolutely nothing in the process, specially with ads now being integrated everywhere on the site and more.
We deserve better payouts.
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RobbinRidunk commented
I am unable to work a typical job due to disabilities, streaming is how I make money. Bringing the payout minimum down to $10 and giving us a bigger cut would mean I /might/ be able to start supporting myself better through these activities.
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GamingHuskies commented
As another UK streamer pointed out below; particularly since the change to local currency for Subscriptions, we've seen a significant decrease in revenue from subscriptions when you combine the 50% Twitch takes and then the taxes applied to us because we are not in the US. Twitch suggested that because subscriptions were cheaper, viewers would gift more subs, but this hasn't been the case. Viewers are happy because their subscriptions are cheaper but are not then gifting additional subs, so our overall revenue has decreased. Combine this with the threshold of $100 to meet, instead of 2 months to make that, it is now taking us 3, meaning overall instead of averaging 6 payouts a year, we average approximately 4 instead. Twitch need to see how damaging this is to the creators.
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Adamification commented
Would love to see this happen, it only makes sense. The more streamers able to do Twitch full time thanks to a fair share of revenue means more frequent viewers on the platform, should be a win-win. Thanks for putting this forward.
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ScruffyFox commented
70/30 has been the standard split in the mobile appstore market since 2011. Absolute joke that 50/50 is the split for Twitch, which is owned by one of the richest companies in the world, owned by the richest man in the world.
Real disgusting stuff but we know Twitch won't do the right thing because they have an effective monopoly in the streaming space.
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beccalicious666 commented
This definitely needs doing, Twitch is quite simply lacking behind the competition on this front and I know many are looking towards these other platforms purely based on this
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Gamerfiend commented
Something that 100% needs work on, Twitch simply isn't competing with other streaming platforms in this manner & there's very little holding people here, this NEEDS to be improved ASAP.
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zahrahgames commented
Voted and shared !!!
Time twitch fix up 😢😢 -
Sullee789 commented
50/50 split is a an absolute joke considering we also sign an exclusivity contract to only stream to Twitch. As a platform it is riddled with problems so we’re forced to stream exclusively to it while none of our concerns are addressed. You will see a mass exodus of streamers if you do not listen and improve the spilt. There is no incentive to aim for partner without an increase to the pay band, the creators make Twitch and we get paid pennies. Absurd.