We all already have shoutout methods in place. How about "last raided" indicator on the streamer channel page? it could be one of the panels on suggested streamer carousel, or a smaller area, PiP, even some text. Sometimes we just wanna find out where our friends went in case a raid fails (HAPPENS OFTEN! PLEASE FIX for both mobile and web) or we had to step out for the end of a stream. Or how about a temporary suggested streamer button for someone you want to promote that day but not necessarily for always on your channel?

I am genuinely starting to get disgusted with Twitch, they make the experience worse day by day to wring more blood out of the stone that is the streamers that make the platform what it is, all with a smug confidence that noone is going to leave because there's just not many viable choices to turn to and rebuilding a community on a new site is grueling.

It's really starting to feel like an abusive relationship.

Taking away one of the best features of Twitch due to a "small few"? You expect us to believe someone would go to an offline streamer's channel, see they're HOSTING someone else, then complain that they couldn't talk to the streamer that's being hosted?

So instead of making a larger notification of "click here to visit the hosted streamer's channel to chat", you just...pull the plug on hosts altogether? And you expect us to believe this is the reason *why* you took away hosts?

All you guys are doing is slowly killing off the platform. One terrible decision after another.

Hey twitch! This explanation is really a joke! I'm so disappointed. What a bs.
I live in Germany and even I understood what hosting was. Because everyone helps each other in the chat. I didn't even had to ask. It was something logic!!!
What do you want us to do...what's the real reason!? What ever you wantedbto achieve: we are going to use twitch less and some day somebody will create a new app for the community for the right reason!

Knowing that twitch treats the creators, the only reason anyone uses the platform, like this makes me significantly less likely to continue to watch content on twitch, much less subscribe.

I run a data science team and worked in digital marketing for a decade, carousel-based AI/ML recommendation algorithms are not an adequate replacement for direct creator/influencer recommendations.

You have some mistake in your answer darkstorm, you mean:
"We see the feedback you’ve shared, and look forward to ignore it and do the opposite".

I look forward to the day when there will be a acceptable alternative to twitch, so i can leave this platform forever ... best decision was to switch from subs to donations .. more money for the streamer, less for twitch. 90% of the decisions of the twitch dev team the past few month, are just total ***. I'm just disappointed ... i miss the day, when the Twitch-Team self was part of the Community .. not just workers, that have nothing to do with twitch, after there shift ends.

If it was so confusing why not just improve the User experience to better show that one streamer is hosting another streamer, I think shout outs are a nice way to integrate something that used to be handled by 3rd party bots/software but they dont meet the same needs as hosting

Why am I surprised that Twitch ONCE AGAIN DOESN'T LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE THAT MAKE THEIR WEBSITE MATTER.
Do better.

Darkstorm's opinion is worthless trash. No wonder nobody respects the twitch admin team.

Absolutely no one believes that the host feature was deprecated because it confused viewers. It is clear to me that hosted streams weren't making Twitch enough ad revenue.

Once again, you don't listen to the creators who make your business possible. No surprise there.

Under no circumstance do I believe that viewers were confused by what hosting was or what it did. And even if they were, they would experience a single moment of confusion and then learn what they were. To remove the valuable hosting feature in exchange for removing a completely theoretical ten to twenty seconds of confusion for viewers is a truly ridiculous trade that benefits almost no one, and neither of those features fully approximate what hosting did. This is still a terrible decision.

I mean, the actual obvious answer to "it confuses viewers" would simply be to make it more clear when someone is hosting someone else. In what world is simply blanket removing it the correct answer? Ridiculous.

A major problem with Twitch continues to grow: they have no idea what the user base actually enjoys about the Platform. "Confusing" viewers is not even remotely a valid excuse to deprecate the feature. Many of the channels that used Hosting were using it so that the smaller community could chat about other larger streams (such as GDQ, international events, etc.), without interacting with the large, basically unusable chat box on the larger stream. I will still advocate and request more feedback for Hosting to be returned.

We need to bring back hosts to Twitch. It was an important way for me to find like minded streamers based on who my friends supported. The other methods are less than stellar. #PleaseBringHostsBack

Imagine getting greedy, removing hosts to try to force viewers to interact with more chats to increase likelihood they'll spend money on new streamers, and then it backfires completely, leaving people unable to see where streamers have gone off to if they click on a stream just as it ends or when the system inevitably hiccups somehow removing them from being able to transfer with a raid, but lo and behold: there is no evidence where the streamer went off to, immediately ending engagement, causing them to leave for youtube or other platforms since they are no longer served new content.

I doubt twitch will listen to any of us, in the end. They're too full of themselves, and if they ever do bring it back, it'll not be this year, and they'll make some big hullabaloo about it being a new feature.

"Oh, it's not hosts, it's, uhhh, sharing! Yeah, it's sharing the streams, which is totally different. But only available for twitch prime members."

I'll second deniboydDJdbs comment (as I'm sure others have said similar) and shout it from the rooftops. Now that this change is being made people are getting left behind after raids, myself included when I've raided and have it pulled up on my phone app.

This is now completely broken and takes people away from the meeting new streamers or supporting friends that you know. It is completely counter to the entire purpose. Bring back Hosting yesterday please.

Since the change, lots of my viewers are complaining when I raid to another streamer they are left behind in my channel with no idea what happened...
so this means for a streamer getting raided, they are getting LESS exposure to new viewers and any potential growth from them.
FIX THIS NOW Twitch by reinstating hosting ASAP!!!

No doubt this is more of a negative experience than whatever it was you were trying to fix, we still don't even know the real reasons behind the motivation for you to remove it! :(

A problem I've noticed since Twitch decided to yank hosts away like they did. When watching a streamer on my console and they raid out the console doesn't follow them so you end up with a black screen.

Previously a raid would also host the person so your console would switch to them and let you then pick to go direct to the channel.

This feels like a poorly thought-out idea that was given a reason that doesn't make sense and was implemented without thought as to how it would affect people on different platforms.

I have always found Raids to be immensely confusing compared to Hosts. Raids always leave this message of "raiding so-and-so" and half the time I see the button "Leave" makes me think "oh I'll leave this channel to go to the other stream".

It does not do that, so I have ended up not being part of the raid, which, as MDCT has said, is anti-growth. Many times I have seen the swell of numbers from a raid, immediately go back down because that's what people do, they do the raid because a streamer told them, and then they leave.

Whereas Hosting does a much better job at redirecting an audience to another streamer, is less confusing, more generous and noticeable an influx of viewers, and more often than not, I see host viewing numbers stay steady, as opposed to raids that dip severely.

A surprise problem for some of us: Now after a raid, there's no evidence left of where everybody went. If a raid leaves you behind, or if you catch an email notification late, it's a ghost town.

Adding your raid destination to the top of your autohost/suggested list is a poor substitute, but better than nothing, but the process is arduous and frustrating, especially if you have a long list of suggested streamers.

the fact that this post and all public complaints from streamers are being ignored shows that a site like uservoice is there just to make it seem like we're being heard... what's the point of uservoice if twitch ignores it -.- ... everyone has understood what the host brought only the provider himself apparently not ... I for my part am very disappointed