This really shouldn't be a suggestion but rather something that should've been done a long time already. Time and time again we hear stories about how Twitch isn't making money and that you didn't hold on to the momentum of COVID. And while I believe the first part of that I seriously doubt the second part, and with every update it starts to feel more like a poor excuse to cover up mismanagement. And I’ll explain why I feel this way and with me I suspect a lot of others.

First let’s start with Gues Star/Stream Together. Today it received yet another update called “Drop Ins”, a feature nearly no-one asked for, for a product nearly no-one is using (less than 1% of streamers). Yet it seems to be the primary thing you’re developing. There’s not a single data point to support the insane amount of time spent developing this, and for some reason this isn’t clear to you. Yes, you as a first party have more data points, but it doesn’t take long to browse around and still see more people using Discord, Teamspeak, Zoom, and other products to collaborate than there are people using Guest Star. If there wasn’t a collection for Guest Star users that’s also used as a shelf on the front page, then you could call Guest Star users easter eggs by how difficult they are to find. So far, it’s not working out and that’s after all the marketing to try and get us to start using it and forced popups to add Guest Star panels to our dashboards. And while doing this you’ve killed a feature people would actually use for collaboration in the form of Squad streaming, which to this day many people use 3rd party websites for and making it available for more streamers is still the top voted idea in the Creators and Stream Features category.

Then onto the mobile app, the new update feels like a cheap copy of TikTok, and somehow its not rolled back yet. The number one goal of the app at this point feels like trying to be some clone of TikTok. What is clear by all the reactions most users don’t want, with it absolutely dominating the mobile uservoice category with still many highly voted requests to undo the update and that’s after you’ve merged most ideas into 1. If we wanted a TikTok experience most of us would open the TikTok app which also has clips and livestreams. While the clips feed is a great feature it should’ve never been merged with live and made the home page. Rather than that it would’ve been much better if you took the same approach as Instagram where reels primarily got their own feed.

I already briefly touched on the killed squad streaming feature, but in the same category there’s another feature people actually wanted to use but that you killed before it had a proper roll out (no just partners is not a proper rollout). Moments, many people liked it but for some reason you killed it before it had a proper roll out. For these 2 features in specific it feels like you roll it out to a group and then based of those data points decide to kill it or not, often you use partners for this, many of which indeed wouldn’t use features like this but are features that would be used by a lot of affiliates. Simply by listening to the community you would’ve easily known this rather than going off data points of a roll out to the wrong group.

There’s an insane disconnect between the people in charge and the community. And that disconnect is pushing people away and causing a (if not the) decline in viewership. And this is not even touching on massive enforcement failures and other flawed programs like the Ambassador program (the idea isn’t flawed, the execution is).

Please just start listening, many of us love Twitch but with each update love it a bit less.