Currently, Follower emotes are only unlocked by 60 unique days of streaming within a 2-year period within the same Affiliation period. Using myself as an example, following the inaction on hate raids last year, I unaffiliated for a month or two as it was the only way I felt like I could get Support’s attention to the issue. Several streamers I know did the same in that period of time. I’ve since reaffiliated to give my regulars as many perks as I can for being in chat and subbing, which brought this Follower emote issue to my attention.

Regardless of having streamed well over 60 unique days in my first year of streaming, that apparently doesn’t count toward unlocking Follower emotes because despite the work I put in, the analytics that show that work on my account, and a plea to Support this morning, Twitch doesn’t look at your total streaming career if there’s a break in affiliation. That said, there’s clear evidence of my past streams but because I only reaffiliated at the end of last October, only stream days from the new affiliation period “count.”

The unique 60-day requirement for two years is reasonable and attainable, but having a break in affiliation (especially due to being hate-raided) shouldn’t affect that unlocking process. I still streamed all those days and a few offboarding and onboarding emails between myself and Support during that break shouldn’t invalidate that.

Where I see Follower emotes working best is by giving your followers access to 5 of your existing sub emotes, and if they want the remainder, they would need to subscribe. It would allow them to get a taste of your library and still feel like a part of the community. However, the way it's set up now makes that complicated.

THE ISSUE: If you decide to make some of your existing sub emotes available to followers with the current system, you have two options: either you have to make a second version of the same emotes, or you have to move 5 of your sub emotes to be only follower emotes. Both of these options have problems.

Creating a second version would lead to, for example, a Love emote having to be Love2 emote or LoveF for followers. This leads to people who are both subs AND followers now having two versions of the same emotes.

Making the follower emotes separate from your sub emotes also has problems, as it makes those follower emotes ONLY useable on your channel and nowhere else, even if they are subscribed to you. This is incredibly limiting.

I've seen people say to just make the follower emotes useable everywhere, but this also has some issues. It basically forces subscribers to follow you if they want the remainder of your emotes. While it may seem like being a subscriber and being a follower should go hand-in-hand, the harsh truth is that some users may simply want to subscribe to a streamer for their emotes and do not care to watch them. By forcing them to be a follower to get the remaining emotes, they now have a channel on their followed bar that they don't care to watch.

THE SOLUTION: Simply make the follower emotes like a lesser sub. They are not new emotes, they just use five of your existing emotes, but they can ONLY be used on your channel. A subscription, on the other hand, allows them to use all of your emotes, including the follower ones, everywhere. Simple as that. Followers will now only follow because they care about your content and want to use some of your emotes during your streams. Subscribers don't have to follow if they don't want to as they already have all of your emotes and they can use them anywhere. There are no second versions of the same emotes.

The only potential downside to this is that you won't be able to make new emotes for followers, but in my opinion, it doesn't make sense to make follower emotes different from sub emotes. Most people will make their first five subscriber emotes the most representative of their community and the most used ones. Those should be the ones followers get access to, not some random off-kilter emotes that they'll barely ever use.

Hopefully this makes sense! Thanks for taking the time to read this.

I know this might be a bit farfetched, but in my short time on Twitch I've noticed that emotes can become a HUGE part of a channel's branding.

If someone is just starting out but really serious about creating a solid brand, they should at least be allowed 2-3 emotes without having to reach affiliate or partner first.

Every streamer has to invest time or money into their own emotes anyway (cause Twitch staff sure ain't paying for our emotes to be designed) so why not?

Figure out a way to streamline the approval process and there you go.

Something else I would love to have as an option is to offer emotes for followers and none followers.

If they become a follower, it would give them the emotes for use like it already works.

If they don't, they could at least use the channel emotes in that specific channel's chat ONLY.

In a recent event people were able to get Pride Emotes which should show that no one should get "left behind" and accepted. Well.. because of not everyone is or was able to get it there should be an option to get them. I already asked people about it and we discussed a bit. They would pay for the pride emotes. I would too. Because they're awesome. Ye, they are Event Emotes. But do you really want to "ban out" people from having them just because of they wasn't aware of these emotes? And do you really want to not make them able to get them to show their Pride? In my opinion this should be changed. People on Twitch, who are part of the Twitch Community have the same opinion. For me it's discriminating (even if I didn't want to write that) to not have these emotes but there are people who got them. So for me these people got stuff that maybe never comes back. And that's sad. I don't want that Pride Emotes get removed, I want that everyone can show their pride, even if this means they need to pay for them. But excluding people just for not beeing active during that time and making it not able to show their pride .. it's not fair :( So it would be wonderful if you can give everyone, even in future the option, to get their Pride with Emotes! :) <3

When you see "Follower Emote uploads are currently disabled on your account", it should say why. It is a worrisome message and it says to learn why, click here, but if it's as simple as "you've only streamed 59/60 times" or something, it would be great if it just said the reason.

Currently it says "Find out how to regain access" as if I were being punished but I don't believe I've ever had access to them before. I don't remember seeing this scary warning situation in the past, so either something went wrong for me or the page has been redesigned in an alarming way.

Thanks!