Lift the Exclusivity on SIMULCASTING to YouTube
As of 2022, it was announced that simulcasting on Twitch and to "short-form" platforms such as TikTok and Instagram would be allowed but that simulcasting to YouTube/Facebook - "long-form" - would not be.
The reason? "...because [Twitch] believes engaging with two streams at once can lead to a sub-optimal experience for your community."
But as clearly demonstrated by Ninja who had to drop Partner/Affiliate in order to simulcast not only to YouTube but to many other platforms, the optimization of viewing experience is highly dependent on the content creator and it showed that it was possible to do it given that the creator had the OPTION to do so. Not everyone will be able to do it and that's fine but giving content creators the room and option to do so is healthy.
With the recent blog post in regards to the rejection of the proposed 70-30 revenue share between creators and Twitch, it is quite evident that ad revenue being dynamic in terms of profit is going to be emphasized a lot more by Twitch. I get it, the company needs to make profit as much as possible but in the same blog post the company also emphasized community and taking care of their creators.
This is why lifting the exclusivity clause on simulcasting to YouTube and other platforms that are long-form would be beneficial for both the creator and Twitch. Twitch will still receive ad-revenue, sub-based split revenue while receiving cross-pollinated traffic from other platforms (which is why Twitch allows streaming on YouTube now with its Partners, just not simulcasting) and the creators will be able to efficiently diversify how they make their content but more importantly SHARE their content in visible places.
Moreover for a lot of streamers who still rely on a part of their monthly income from Twitch, they don't have to lose out on benefits from being a Partner/Affiliate that they've worked hard to attain. For streamers that are part of Twitch stream teams and also (depending on directory) take advantage of Twitch Drops frequently to grow their audiences, this offers a way for sustaining and growing their brand on Twitch without feeling trapped by Twitch and will lead to less complaints for the dev-end to sift through when it comes to monetization/some viewing experience.
NefasQS
shared this idea
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Jayyyyettv
commented
It's about the money. $$$$ that's why things are the way they are. Less cross streaming platforms which means, Create a twitch account spend the money to sub to Streamer.
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NakamuraRTS
commented
On the one hand, Twitch encourages creators to funnel users to the platform by creating content elsewhere.
The reason for this is that there is no significant way to get discovered when you are not live. You can't always be live, so the best answer is to grow on larger platforms and then hang out with your fans here.
Twitch offers a culture community support with a highly interactive chat experience. This is great.But it does not offer a way to get discovered, as it isn't interested in the VoD / short form / social post feed business. We cannot communicate with our followers without getting them to hang out outside of the platform.
If Twitch is only going to do 1 thing well and rely on other platforms to truly function, I believe they cannot have their cake an eat it too. Content exclusivity and limitations for affiliates and partners to multi-streaming make absolutely no sense when contrasted with the company's other stances - especially the stingy revenue split and over the top ad interruptions.
I'm in full support of multi-streaming being the way forward. If Twitch will not in some form get ahead of the game, it will be simply left in the dust by the competition. With many of us having put a lot of work into succeeding on this platform, that is not what people would want, I think.