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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Abraxas86 commented
Lmao "50/50 we're in this together". Uh, except twitch gets 50% of EVERY sub, and I only get 50% of my own.
Fine - play that way, then. Pool the total subscriber revenue for every streamer on Twitch, then divide that by every streamer that was active that month and yourselves. There's your true "50/50 we're in it together" value for sub income.
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AnaiyaFalcon commented
The numbers quoted in this blog post are so disconnected and honestly laughable. Twitch does realize that 99% of active channels on their platform have fewer than 20 viewers... right? And that 200 hours of streaming is a 50-hour work week? These numbers are so deliberately different than the majority of streamers so as to cloud any arguments against what you want to do - which is take more money from the people you claim to support.
Do you know how much more money Twitch would have to pay me on a monthly basis to give me a 70/30 split? $18 USD. The fact that you are cash-grabbing from your smallest streamers is gross. Oh and I still don't make enough on subs right now to make a $50 threshold so it looks like I'm still on an "every-other-month" schedule.
And the ad split revenue plan is ridiculous. Twitch has completely ignored every attempt to show that scheduled ads on live content is disruptive to growth and viewership and refuses to listen. Also, 55% of what? I looked at my new options that went active in the last week and there is actually no projections of what I would make AT ALL, even a rough estimate based on my average viewership. Nothing. So if I want the 55% ad revenue split, I have to take a gamble that the loss of viewers annoyed that I'm shoving ads down their throat for money will be worth the potential undisclosed amount that Twitch might pay me... every other month.
Honestly so disappointed in Twitch's decisions in the last couple of months. To sabotage hosting, then remove it, and now to pull yet more revenue directly from your smallest streamers is both shameful and bad business. This is not the '90s or early '00s any more. Corporations that treat their customers and creators like dirt get ghosted.
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highlandhunters commented
Got 70/30 or youtube will get your biggest streamers. They already get that at youtube and you guys are idiots for declining this. Dumbasses.
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GEEGA commented
I dislike the crafting of that statement but don't hate the message - a lot of the numbers used really don't show how things affect people at the individual level. I ask that you provide distribution diagrams for ad revenue, sub revenue, and avg CCV so we can analyze which groups gain and lose what under the current changes. It seems to me like no one is losing massively under these changes, but the statement is too easy to pick apart and twist as a bad thing. Please do better in how you present data in layman's terms.
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lavorey commented
That is so ******* stupid twitch ********
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GodOfKnockers commented
As someone who is a Twitch affiliate, I want to say think you for answering and for the first time ever, being open about what is going on. Have a good one and think you again for the response.
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DnDSquirrel commented
I want to point out that not everyone has seen the $50 payout yet, I haven’t and the revenue split is a huge limitation that only your chosen. If you’re going to make change, like the $50 payout, then it needs to be done to everyone. It would be great to see a daily or weekly payout. If we’re in this together and you’re not going going to change for all, then you’ll lose streamers, I’m considering switching to YT for streaming if things don’t improve for the ALL that you claim. Consider a better revenue split for everyone.
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ChasePK commented
“I’m sorry we can’t give that revenue split live streaming is just too expensive even though every single one of our competitors gives a better split please just take our word for it”
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PoisonValentine commented
this is a great way to incentivize people to tell their followers to support them financially OFF twitch. saying "we're in this together" after doing next to nothing to combat hate raids and everything else creators have to deal with is incredibly tone-deaf.
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twitch.tv/MonicaElleRose commented
now i understand why i see so many people using the hashtag #subofftwitch
This update really takes any incentive away for wanting to continue to invest time in creating any content on twitch.
The part where you say "100 CCU streamer who streams 200 hours a month " is very infuriating as if thats something streamers should be aspiring to.
Not only that you don't do anything to limit the bandwidth streamers use.
Non affiliate channels don't run ads and can stream at 1080p60 why aren't they throttled to 720?
Partnered and Affiliate channels don't have control of what ads appear on stream, and if we want to do say 1 3 minute ad an hour we can't do that manually and still be a part of the AIP. -
cathstrine commented
Yada yada yada
Blatant lies
Yada yada yada
"We're in this together"When you treat people like disposable things, they will treat you the same when the opportunity comes.
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southernnorthlive commented
I get running a website that plays live videos is expensive for Twitch. But so does for YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms. Twitch can't even raise it to at least 60/40 instead went on to take more from streamers who have the 70/30 deal.
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mryellow_live commented
This sucks! We put in the effort we should be payed faster and earn more. You guys wonder why you keep losing people to YouTube it’s cause of stuff like this. Changing to 70/30 wouldn’t hurt a multi billion dollar company.
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marideerie commented
We all know and understand that the service costs money. But when you are owned by one of the richest companies on the planet, you cannot simply say "we can't afford this" and expect people to believe you. Show us proof that you really would be operating at a loss if you want to be "transparent and open" about this.
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DaSheriffff commented
That a disgusting response from twitch. They are a multi-billion dollar company and they are acting like they are losing money. 50/50 would never effect them and nor will it destroy their company financially. Giving us 50/50 would mean we would stream more and alot longer giving you guys even more profit. This response will go down badly and people will end up joining YouTube Live to stream since they give 50/50
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GumblePlays commented
Your ad's Idea is something that is only going to drive people away. Since you've added the split on ad's and the 5 mins straight of ad viewing I have had more people complain than before. The cost of running a business is your own problem. Maybe instead of taking a hard earned 50% of a streamers business you market better, plan out your yearly budget better, take smaller wages the higher up in the company you are. Stop using the little guy to profit. You're literal thiefs at this point, and you are GOING TO LOSE streamers to other platforms with better payouts.
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MeckaVT commented
The revenue split should be 120/-20. Every sub should cost Jeff bezos one dollar
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n2ash commented
What a repulsive thing to post. You know better than to quote IVS customer rates like it's your actual cost of business, and you know better than to highlight 200 hours a month as if it's some kind of standard. Hat-in-hand behavior from a subsidiary of a trillion dollar company is outright pathetic.
It would have cost you nothing to ignore this suggestion and you would have come out looking better. As it stands, I'm terminating all my personal business with Twitch and Amazon and pushing my contacts towards other solutions.
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Ash_Angelic commented
So, you want people to leave? No one is going to stay through 5 minutes of ads and with this revenue splat every streamer I know considering moving to YouTube. This decision is gonna cut your profit because no one wants to stay on twitch or tolerate the ads. As an entertainment company I figured you would’ve understood that but I Amazon doesn’t understand that people aren’t just mindless ad clicking robots.
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Hintetsomaru commented
I'm not here to say running servers is cheap. I'm not here to say the revenue split should be better. I'm here to point out that, with absolutely no adblocker on, I received a chain of 7 ads, totaling almost 5 minutes of being removed from a stream. For live content, that's really, really jarring. And this is not uncommon. I have had people complain about ads on my stream, where I run as few as possible, getting chains of 4 to 9 ads in a row.
You want to talk about 'potential money making', but that's the part you miss. The only way to meet the metric you've set the rule by is by literally putting your viewers, the people who PAY US (I use the royal 'us', as both Twitch and Streamers, in this instance), in an inconvenient position where they're missing up to 3 minutes of stream, an hour. Over the course of a normal stream for me, that's only 12 minutes. But for the people who stream 8, 10, even 12 hours a day, that adds up, and fast.
I'm figuring the 50/50 split is what we're stuck with, but good God, can you FIX your ad system so it doesn't remove people from the streams? You were trying in-window ads for a while, that didn't disrupt the player, but instead shrunk it slightly, with the ad on the side or on the bottom. This is a far better system, as it doesn't actively take you out of the video. If you can't give us a better pay split (Heavens knows you make enough off our hard work.) you could at least make it easier for us to run ads, without inconveniencing our viewers, who are the ones who pay us.