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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.
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SaltyWyvern shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →
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Declined  ·  Twitch responded  · 

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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  • Gnuppel commented  ·   ·  Report

    What a ******** justification. Simply more money in their own pockets. I will cancel all my subscriptions when the upcoming changes come into effect. What does Twitch do for a 50/50 share? The reasoning on costs are absolutely ridiculous. To expect prices for standard users ... laughable. On the contrary, Amazon contributes nothing to the network infrastructure, which they use for free like Youtube & co. The whole thing is paid for by us.
  • jana_296 commented  ·   ·  Report

    I very much hope that with the new 50/50 conditions, many streamers will no longer put up with it and switch to other streaming providers. To say that twitch and the streamer are equally involved in the streamer's success is outrageous enough but then to say over 22k people campaigned for a 70/30 share and in the same vein to offer 'equality' to all except a few really big streamers is complete rubbish. That has nothing to do with an equal pay for all streamers.
  • XansQ42 commented  ·   ·  Report

    70:30 for all will be the more air move

  • fml1989 commented  ·   ·  Report

    This ain't it. Twitch, it was a great time but you guys are ruining the platform with the corporate greed. Tell your business managers to go away and do something with stocks on wall street or something, instead of trying to pressure out some money from creative people.

    Also if you would actually have a high resolution input and output, I would believe your claims with the cost being +1000 USD. It is ridiculous to be capped to 5-6mbit/s upload. I still am waiting for the day, where I will have a lag free and compression artefact free video feed from twitch.
  • BugBrainzTV commented  ·   ·  Report

    The 50/50 split is going to be the reason a lot of streamers switch platforms. Especially when you just booked expensive artists for twitch con. Why? It just doesn't seem logical and is a really bad idea for your own platform.
  • ArmyWolve commented  ·   ·  Report

    Twitch will be the EA of media outlets, this move isn’t the way to go, instead of taking a bigger piece of the pie, why don’t you guys just do what Netflix,Amazon, and Microsoft does. Give more to the people under one subscription. While buying out head corps that’s in competition, Netflix makes shows from video games which are great, Microsoft buys game developers to beat out other companies like Sony, amazon an ever expanding seller also makes movies, music and such… while twitch wants to dig deeper into content creators pockets… you guys can make any excuse and even if there’s some logical and valid points, in the end it will always be about money, some streamers live off this and you’re going to jeopardize their whole living… this is the wrong move! “Btw I know Amazon owns twitch, but twitch is still independent”
  • Dante commented  ·   ·  Report

    Lmao what idiots. I'm already seeing streamers planning on closing their accounts and buggering off back to Youtube.

    The only thing twitch got on youtube right now is emotes, and that might change soon too. You gonna look at streamers and tell them shite where as youtube is saying they will pay fair AND offer native 1080? While you, a site built for streaming, only offer fake 1080 (900 resolution ****)?

    Bad pay cuts, more ads than cable tv (8 in a row was bullshite) as well as them being repetitive, annoying and unskipable? And then putting in new features like the weird *** cheer **** where people cant use bits anymore? Like I had heard NOTHING but ******** on that one.

    Yall don't listen to your streamers you gonna find you lose even more money. People will stop spending money for that ****, will do direct donos so you can't touch jack and then what you gonna do? Can't rely on ads cause they are getting so stupid people are just going to go "No" and click away and now only only do the streamer lose out but you too.

    The number of times I just closed twitch out entirely and went to watch youtube cause of the **** ads is nuts, and I don't wanna do bits or subs if the STREAMER isn't getting good pay.
  • bishoukun commented  ·   ·  Report

    Y'all are owned by a megacorporation, you're not going under by paying people more fairly. Sorry not sorry, but streamers are the ones putting the time and effort and energy into streaming, and without the streamers there is no Twitch. Without Twitch? There are still streamers and other platforms. The streamers should be getting a larger cut of all income than the platform in all instances, at a minimum of 60/40. Amazon isn't about to let its precious gaming niche mine collapse, so let's be less greedy instead of more - because everyone really should be getting 70/30.
  • FB3Network commented  ·   ·  Report

    Nobody here wants this change, yet you're enforcing it on us anyway. So many creators rely on a good and fair revenue split so they can pay for their livelihoods. A 70/30 split gives 70% to the creator, and 30% to Twitch. This split actually showed we're supporting the streamers we care about. We did not want an "update" to the revenue split! Now, you're forcing all of us, including non-affiliates, to have a 50/50 split instead. But, the only people who won't be affected by this change will be the streamers on their premium deals. This makes it harder for us to support our favorite streamers. They love their job. Cutting the rev split makes it harder for us to support them. In the blog post, you even mentioned that you were owned by Amazon, a company that is literally worth trillions. Your AWS servers can't even support 8K bitrate. YouTube offers a fair 70/30 revenue split and over quadruple the bitrate. This change needs to be stopped. You are not in this together. So many of your creators are jumping ship to YouTube because of poor decisions like this. We demand that you move all creators to a 70/30 rev split and pay them quicker.
  • GannicusRex commented  ·   ·  Report

    Currently, it's reported that about 9 million people go live every month. Instead of changing the split with larger streamers, why not charge a small fee, maybe $5/mo to go live? Even if that caused 2 million people to not go live, leaving 7 million X $5 each is $35 million per year and or $420 million /year... I don't know the economics of the sub split change in comparison and maybe the price could be higher to go live. Think of it another way... most business platforms have SOME fee i.e. $29/mo for shopify. Would it be crazy to charge $5-10/mo for an exceptionally technically advanced video streaming service? At $10/mo that's maybe $840 million. That's also VERY highly profitable since it takes almost no infrastructure to charge existing users a nominal fee.
  • Nate_LapT commented  ·   ·  Report

    Ah, watch out
    You might get what you're after
    Cool babies
    Strange but not a stranger
    I'm an ordinary guy
    Burning down the house
    Hold tight
    Wait 'til the party's over
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    Burning down the house
    Here's your ticket, pack your bags
    Time for jumpin' overboard
    Transportation is here
    Close enough but not too far
    Maybe you know where you are
    Fightin' fire with fire
    Ah, all wet
    Hey, you might need a raincoat
    Shakedown
    Dreams walking in broad daylight
    365 degrees
    Burning down the house
    Ah, it was once upon a place
    Sometimes I listen to myself
    Gonna come in first place
    People on their way to work
    And, baby what do you expect?
    Gonna burst into flames, ah
    Burning down the house
    My house
    Is out of the ordinary
    That's right
    Don't wannna hurt nobody
    Some things sure can sweep me off my feet
    Burning down the house
    No visible means of support
    And you have not seen nothin' yet
    Everything's stuck together
    And I don't know what you expect
    Staring into the TV set
    Fightin' fire with fire, ah
  • DaveSkywalker commented  ·   ·  Report

    Twitch is too small of a part of Amazon for them to care. According to Motley Fool, Twitch's revenue represents only 0.1% of Amazon's revenue. They could shut down Twitch tomorrow and it would barely register with their stock price. Amazon should just sell the platform to someone that will actually care about it and the streamers/creators that generate that revenue.

    It's not apples to apples, but look at what Udemy does to support course instructors and then look at what Amazon does for Twitch streamers. Udemy aggressively markets courses (not just the platform), provides tons of data to instructors, offers tons of training, basically does everything it can to make courses successful. The revenue split is lower, 40%, but that's based on Udemy promoting your course. But the revenue split goes up to 97%!! if someone buys a course based on your promotion. Imagine that? Rewarding creators for bringing more people to the platform. What does Amazon do? The opposite. They took away the ability to contact subscribers. They took away friends, which I at least used to discover half of the channels I follow. They increased ads making streams less desirable to watch. They do nothing to help streamers get more viewers and subs.

    It's simple, they don't care. And they never will.
  • dragonslayer8345 commented  ·   ·  Report

    I feel that the Revenue Split should be the following as well. 60/40 for affiliate and 70/30 for partners. Currently right now as we speak both Facebook and Youtube are offer 70/30 for there streamers that are either affiliate and partner. With that being the case then twitch is going to lose alot of streamers and they will end up leaving just to go to another platform that pays out way better. And with amazon own Twitch and Amazon being a Billion dollar company it not like they would miss out on much of the revenue from Subs. That is why most streamers recieve more bits then they do subs because they now that when someone subs or even gift a sub that 50% of it is going to twitch, where when we get Bits none of that goes to twitch. The other reason i believe that the payouts should be higher is because live streaming alone takes alot of time and money. Money that is required to upgrade certain parts of the PC, which then allows us to keep up with Newer games that continue to come out. With no money and no upgrades it stops us from being able to upgrade and to stream.
  • bluesage8 commented  ·   ·  Report

    As one person already stated with twitch using Amazon Web Services there is no way they are paying full price for the services since twitch is owned by amazon, naturally they do have to put that they are to keep themselves from being backed in a corner...

    I do think that streamers deserve a 70/30 split because as one myself I understand the hard work, time, dedication and energy that goes into a live stream, not only that but the amount of discoverability that is available to smaller streamers is almost non-existent which causes streamers having to find ways outside of the platform to get discovered. I think twitch constantly pushing their streamers to play ads is also irritating for a few reasons. As a streamer and a viewer to others I hate going into a stream and getting interrupted by ads, it makes me want to leave as soon as I get one, I come to twitch to watch people enjoy a game that I am passionate about and enjoy interacting with different communities that like that same game, when hit with an ad it interrupts the enjoyment I was having due to not knowing what's going on in the stream making me want to leave.

    Twitch also lowering the cost per sub for viewers in different countries a few years ago also caused streamers to take a pay cut unless you had viewers from those countries then as a streamer you didn't get more people subscribing because of this change and instead the people that were subscribed in those countries now pay less and the streamer gets paid less as well since they get 50 percent of whatever that viewer paid...

    This part is where probably majority of people are going to disagree with me... but for people that kept pushing just for the $100 payout to be lowered, what were you thinking?! twitch did exactly what I thought they were going to which was essentially "we put our best foot forward and did half of what was asked, you all should still be happy because we met half way" no if you all would have pushed for the pay split being higher instead you realize all you would have needed was 29 subs a month instead of 40 right? you would have had more payouts anyway due to earning more money, and even then you all still have a 100 payout minimum STILL because wire transfers require a $100 minimum unless you decide a different payout method, so how much did it help...?

    so to summarize everything up, Yes im irritated with twitch for one not being honest with their community about how much their actually paying for AWS, as well as acting like there some small company who cant afford to payout their streamers when they clearly can.

    But...

    I am also irritated with the people who only focused on lowering the payout threshold not thinking twitch was going to half @.$.$. it like how they have done with everything else in the past... Due to how twitch has handled this it may be time to start looking to other platforms to stream on... Also guys remember when twitch announced "Squad Streaming" over 3 years ago and said it would eventually roll out to affiliates still haven't seen any announcement on that for awhile either... have we?
  • Oceanity commented  ·   ·  Report

    "Using the published rates from Amazon Web Services’ Interactive Video Service (IVS)"

    Hey so uh, not sure if this is news to you, but you do realize you're an Amazon company right? You do realize that Amazon companies aren't paying what an average consumer is for AWS stuff yeah?
  • NicoTheDane commented  ·   ·  Report

    Amazon made 469.82 billion dollars in 2021 let that sink in, yet we get more and more ads you make it harder to make a living on twitch less viewers creators switching to yt of fb, that's not what we need. we need a fair 70/30 split

    all these changes aren't for us but just business its forcing creators and viewers away from twitch, ive been a daily user of twitch since 2011 since the justin.tv days, hurts me seeing a platform i love not give a sh*t about its users for years, i know there's staff at twitch who feels the same way talked to a couple

    also no other partner that i know is streaming 200 hours every month. Is the average twitch partner really streaming 10 hours every day? most streamers can barely reach 100 per month
    200 hours a month is FIFTY HOURS A WEEK,

    Amazon buying twitch was one of the WORST things to happen to the platform. all about money money and money, not us the users / creators
  • ShaelynTheFae commented  ·   ·  Report

    hey Twitch, how much are you making off the ads you're forcing on everyone? care to be a bit more transparent with us all?
  • Goetica commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hey guys, we've gotten a 27% increase in revenue per hour (given the streamer and us split things *equally* right?) every year exponential for the last five years. That said we don't want to give you more of it. We won't say we can't. We just won't. We're investing back into the streaming itself and increasing the money coming in. We know you would do the same (typically creators go to great lengths to increase viewer engagement which drives profit), but we do it better, and this is just an excuse anyways. That'll be all, folks!
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