Do not deprecate hosts.
There was a notice put out about hosts becoming deprecated next month.
This is an awful idea. Do not do this.
The reason given for doing it is clear and obvious deflection; it's false. No one with average viewership under like 6000 uses twitch chats as a community server; when someone is offline, that's it. Their attention is off the chat and elsewhere. The idea that hosts prevent interactions with streamers is complete bull.
Moreover, raids are not a direct replacement for hosts (most people don't even -know- this because this fact has been so thoroughly obfuscated,) because of the referral ID causing a viewer to not count to the raided channel for ad or partnership metrics. Hosting was an incredibly useful -community building tool- on twitch; you host into another channel, that user notes you down, they host into you and share their audience in a way that actually contributes useful numbers beyond "was a viewer". Raiding does not do this. Raiding is an anti-growth tool. Viewers might follow and check someone out again following a raid, but many are there primarily just because a streamer raided them over and have no interest in staying; hosts, because they required active interaction with the hosted channel were more likely to stay because it tested viewer interest.
Hosting was and still is an invaluable community tool. To remove it and not provide its actual functionality to raids is extremely anti-user.
Hello everyone! Thank you for coming together to bring us your feedback on Hosts. We made the decision to remove this feature because it consistently confuses viewers–particularly new viewers or those who are less familiar with Twitch–because they don’t realize the channel they visited is hosting another stream and also they cannot interact with the hosted streamer in chat.
We also hear your feedback and acknowledge the need for community building tools that help promote other streamers. We’ve recently introduced the following features that help you do that:
- We recently released a feature called shoutout that lets you promote another streamer’s channel in your chat and makes it easy for your viewers to follow that channel without leaving your stream. To initiate the shoutout during your stream, use the chat command “/shoutout [channel]” - viewers who do not follow the channel will see a pop-up with a follow button for that channel. If the streamer has an upcoming stream in their schedule, the shoutout will also highlight their next scheduled stream with a button to set a reminder to watch.
- Recommend another stream to viewers when you are offline by adding them to your Suggested Channels list in your channel settings (formerly known as your “Autohost list”). When their channel is live, their stream will appear in the carousel at the top of the page. You can also display your suggested streamers list in your streamer shelf.
We appreciate the feedback you’ve shared, and look forward to new suggestions that help your communities connect with one another.
-
RemingtonRyder commented
If it really is the case that hosting is not intuitive or interactive enough, that seems like something to work on, rather than canning a feature entirely.
-
stephenangelico commented
Hosting is a large part of why I love Twitch. When I was introduced to Twitch, the idea that people would use hosting to build up other streamers was so fundamentally different to any other platform I knew of. It still helps people today. Please don't take it away.
-
rBree2 commented
Hosting is not an obsolete feature to be entirely replaced by raids, and especially not auto-hosts.
Coming to a channel and seeing channels who that channel's owner(s) support is how I discovered nearly half of the communities I am now a part of. That was done entirely without raids and would be made impossible by the removal of the host function.
When I have a channel open as a viewer when that channel is not live, my expectation is not to see nothing there, ever. My expectation is to see who they support, so that I can potentially check out content that they, personally, endorse. Not twitch algorithm selected stuff. The algorithm can never replace human selection. "You may like" is no substitute for "this streamer personally recommends". The former is literally an ai-generated guess that is often wildly inaccurate; the latter is almost always correct because it was made by a person, for a person.
Auto-hosts are also a very good tool for those who have the raid function not work for them. (Spoiler alert, twitch: your raid function, while pretty good, does not fire off 100% of the time. I've been in streams where the streamer raided but I was left behind in spite of me not having clicked to leave the raid, because the raid window never popped up in the first place!)
Removing the ability to have streamer-endorsed passive discovery is a terrible idea. You don't need to remove existing functions to support a different function. Because raids and hosts are not mutually exclusive options. They have different strengths and weaknesses, serving to do different things. Keeping both is the ideal.
-
onehandedstunt commented
please don't remove the feature! It's a vital part of how users find the streams they like and how streamers can help each other
-
Sinajko commented
Bitte nicht
-
GingerBeardicus commented
Absolutely horrible choice. We need hosting for discoverability. We already do all the other things!
-
DiffuseMoose commented
Recent news has indicated that Twitch will be removing the host feature. I always liked the idea of separating hosts from raids. Raids seemed to be more of an active feature while hosts have been more passive. As a partnered streamer myself, I haven't been able to stream as often as I would like recently due to work and life obligations. However, I still love supporting my friends on Twitch by hosting them. I've been told by members of the community that they have discovered new content creators through my channel when auto-hosting was still supported. So I still make an active effort to host my friends when I can, just in case people out there stumble upon my channel when I'm not live and get to see some new faces among the Twitch community.
My proposal isn't just to keep hosting as a core function of Twitch, but to allow streamers the ability to host multiple streamers at the same time. Maybe the channel owner suggests a 'featured host' among 3 streamers of their choice. Of course, with a carousel or the ability to scroll, streamers can host more than 3 streamers if allowed by Twitch. I can see how hosting too many streamers at once would cause an undesirable and cluttered experience. But, with, again, a carousel or scrolling functionality implemented, it could work.
After having streamed for over 4 years now, I do see value in hosting streams. I'd hate to see it truly die. Please consider my proposal! Thank you for your time.
I created a mockup of what this might look like. You can see it here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lKZ1dpK54RF3dMq4Gf4u12NOD4zh2S7I/view?usp=sharing
-
TheStormCallerWitch commented
You guys can't even mod your own **** site, look at that diseaster that was the vtuber takeover. Y'all couldn't even keep the tag clean and you think this is a good idea? Get outta here.
-
TophGear commented
Hosting is so beneficial, and it's clear whoever made the decision to give them the axe isn't in tune with a good chunk of their streamers. There are days where a streamer just needs to end but doesn't want to commit to a full raid, or maybe they just want to show some support for another channel by showing their community who they like watching.
Do better, Twitch.
-
Oceanity commented
As always, Twitch makes bafflingly terrible decisions without even bothering to poll their userbase.
I really hope a reliable alternative shows up sooner rather than later at this point.
-
Corrupted_Tree commented
This is a terrible decision, removing a simple tool to help discover creators. I mean it wasn’t perfect but it done something to help. It wouldn’t be so bad if you are planning to add new features or work with affiliates more to help them with getting their content in front of people. Such a frustrating Time using twitch right now as a creator and viewer.
-
Mark_deLight commented
WTF is wrong with Twitch management? Are you trying to kill your platform? First friends lists, and now host mode - soon there will be absolutely NO FREAKING way to discover content that isn't force fed directly from you. Which is the absolutely stupidest business model I've ever seen.
-
CnEY commented
There are several very obvious use cases for hosting that the ****-poor excuse for a FAQ clearly doesn't consider:
1. Hosting the equivalent of viewing parties for large events where the event channel's chat is uselessly impossible to follow, and you want to provide a safe space for your own community to enjoy the event. (I've known several streamers who do this for every GDQ, for example.)
2. Using hosts as effectively a low-key raid. I'm a small streamer; pretty often I have few enough viewers to send somewhere that calling it out with a raid seems downright ostentatious. Since Twitch borked host alerts ages ago, I use that as a "feature" to send low-key raids when I don't want to draw attention to myself. (One other solution to this would be to hide the number of viewers in raids below a certain size, but that would similarly require Twitch to actually exert effort which pretty much everything they do now, including removing hosts, is clearly designed to avoid.)
3. DIscovery. Is the hosts tab under Following going away too? That can be very useful as a way to pool Twitch's network effect into one place to find streamers one degree removed from ones you already follow, and it's far more efficient than consciously needing to look at the suggested streamers list on multiple streamers you follow individually.
-
boonybun commented
Although I feel that raiding is very valuable as I've found amazing communities that way, hosting is even more so. I love checking out who people host when they're offline, and have had more chance to be discovered as a result.
-
tumbleina commented
Hosting brings people together for interactions between friends, aquaintances & streamers. It is a huge part of the communities i have been involved iin and a great way to show your support.
-
shimigami_Nukimara commented
Hosting a silent raid whether or you streamed that day hosting effectively boost your revenue and the fact your taking that away makes me sick
-
Tenmar commented
Removing hosting as a function/tool does not make sense. Especially if you apply the philosophy that the President of Twitch just stated during PAX West 2022. If the President of Twitch insists that Twitch is a service and our stage then we should be in control of who or what we want to have on our stage. Which includes people and more importantly EVENTS that we want to host but cannot co-stream.
Think of all the conventions, charity events and esport events that exist that streamers cannot co-stream, but because they are interested in it to host and spend time chatting with their viewership.
If you remove the Host command, you have to go through the annoying process of updating your suggested channels list which you as a streamer will not have control over anymore so you won't be able to change the hosting to GDQ.
Because let's be honest, you aren't having a conversation with your community when there are 10k people chatting in a single chat room.
Twitch is making a false assumption that hosting is equal to discoverability. It isn't. Discoverability is in the hands of the streamer to market their content wherever and to whoever they can reach.
Hosting may not match the vision of the President of Twitch, but he certainly lacks the vision and understanding of how useful hosting is as a tool for streamers to engage with their community.
-
BomberCanuck commented
There's bound to be tons of threads emerging about this, but I'm going to add my voice to the masses...
Getting rid of Hosting is a terrible idea. Hosting other channels has been a prime source of networking and community-building for me, and I'm certain there are other creators out there who fall into that category. Notifications generated from hosting, particularly when I as the hosting streamer was offline (before it all got changed), were a simple but effective visual/audio aid to get noticed by other streamers and to garner support for building up my own community. But now, that is being taken away from us. For somebody like me who is a small-time streamer that has been working just as hard as some of the bigger names in the business, yet struggling to get discovered and stay relevant, this is a huge blow. I now have to work that much harder to connect with other streamers and their community members, without resorting to flagrant self-promotion, which is greatly frowned upon.
If you're going to take away Hosting, you need to give us a different way for us as streamers to get noticed by other streamers. How about a badge for Affiliates? How about featuring streamers with low viewer/follower counts on the front page? I would love to hear others' thoughts and perspectives on how streamers can make themselves known to other streamers, in a manner that does not leave a bad taste in everyone's mouths.
-
WindowstoSky commented
Things I like about hosting:
* You can have a central page for a special event like a raid train, where it's easy to see where the train is.
* It just worked the other day when I wasn't able to stream on time and my subscribers came by and could easily see what channel I was in and join me there for related content
* When I stream then raid out and someone arrives late, it helps them find where everyone went
* It is the best tool I know of for people to help promote a small streamer. Hosting, raids, and shoutouts are a big part of what makes Twitch grow more healthily and lovingly than any other community based streaming platform I've ever seen.I wouldn't mind if you unified the chats, so watching a hosted channel would force you into that chat, if that's the problem. Still though when the streamer comes live, it should yank you back to their stream and their chat.
-
dashofdaisy commented
Bad, bad decision, Twitch!! By getting rid of the hosting feature you are cutting off a major avenue for streamers to grow their communities! I am only one person, but SO many friends have discovered new streamers through my hosting, just as I have found new streamers by seeing who my friends are hosting. We are a collective effort and you are essentially cutting off a valuable tool for streamers and viewers to share and grow the communities we've come to love so much. Your reason for eliminating it makes ZERO sense as it does exactly what you say it doesn't. Ppl click on the stream I'm hosting and can interact with that streamer and community immediately. And shoutouts only work if that shouted out streamer is currently streaming, but who's going to leave the stream of someone they're already actively watching to go watch and interact with a new streamer from a shoutout? Raids help, yes, but that's the only "solution" you offer that actually meets your goal for getting rid of hosting, but still isn’t enough of a reason to eliminate hosting. I'm extremely upset about this move. Hosting does not limit a streamer's growth potential as you say in the announcement, but it does the exact opposite!!! Your reasoning makes zero sense and contradicts how your solutions work. It's as if Twitch don't understand how Twitch works.