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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RiotBananas commented
It's now been 12 months since this post, increased activity and no response.
Since this post, local subscription pricing has cost me and many others a further 25% of their overall income. It was claimed that we'd make the difference up because new subscribers would come along due to the price changes but this hasn't been the case for many, if not most streamers who aren't in the thousands of viewers range.
Couple this with converting to USD and then converting back to GBP to pay us, UK streamers stand to make approx. 40% of the £3.99 subscription fee.
Twitch is the only "big" content creator platform in 2022 paying such a paltry sum to its creators.
We've all seen the Twitter threads about "Knowing your worth" as a creator, it's about time we started at the top.
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OETiger commented
So its been a year.. since then more weird decisions/financial cuts were made and half of the streamers i once watched are gone bc they finaly after month of squeezing themselfes outa the last penny pulled the plug. And no reaction to this? cool cool
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malice commented
Voted & agree with everything here! We put so much time and effort and money into the platform, it would make it feasible for a lot of us to put even more money into it by going full time if we had higher revenue splits. Especially since regional sub pricing has not actually increased the amount of gift subs/subs overall and we can now make less than $2.50 per sub. I love the idea of regional sub pricing and making subscriptions accessible to all, I just wish we got more of the revenue from them!
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lucid_glitch commented
Agreed. In fact, it should be more than 70%
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MomoSidelock commented
Vote and strong agree
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SachiMizora commented
Voted & agree with everything said!!
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Porecomesis commented
I agree with all of this. Give streamers more money.
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magicalgirltomoe commented
Voted.
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Rcjuk commented
Money me! Money now! Me a money needing a lot now.
But seriously, the split is a joke.
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MajorRespect commented
voted.
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Alice_Bluu commented
Twitch would see a lot more streamers and viewers returning or starting up on this platform if they do this. I would also like to see less forced ads on smaller channels. It doesn't generate any revenue and it turns viewers away.
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Charleemanderz commented
Absolutely agree.
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illustraeted commented
100% agree
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silentbuttdudley commented
100% agree with everything above
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qwertz143 commented
pls I like money
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WhiskeyOnTwitch commented
The fact that they take so much and deliver us so little is mind blowing. Hopefully this will start something great for everyone!
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APVideo commented
about time !
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Kitty_Kale commented
I think that the payout should be $50-$80, and the subs should be at least 60/40.
Each month I make more than the threshold but recognise that the threshold should be lower. I don't believe it should be below $50, it helps to push those who have reached affiliate into achieving more.
I also don’t think that the split should exceed 75/25, as currently 50/50 is still fair, we sign up to it, we don’t have to be content creators. -
Babynirnroot commented
I've been streaming for 8 months and I've made 15 dollars that I could be using but it's just sitting there I could use it to pay my friend back at least just a little for the emotes she made I think its unfair to have such a high payout threshold
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Rev_Lovecraft commented
Voted for that in a HEARTBEAT.