The streaming giant is reportedly considering Twitch pay rate changes for the platform’s content creators in an attempt to boost overall profitability.
Currently, the Twitch pay rate (the amount of money you receive per stream on the platform) is being reevaluated by the big dogs in charge. Unsurprisingly, the motivation behind this development is to maximise overall profits.
The article that first reported on this matter suggests that Twitch’s plan to achieve this goal isn’t set in stone. Instead, there are a number of potential solutions.
The first amongst these proposed options is to decrease the Twitch pay rate that streamers and content creators receive. The report claims that streamers would see their share of subscription fees reduced from 70% to 50%. However, any changes of this nature are unlikely to be egalitarian.
Many of the streaming service’s most popular streamers have already negotiated favourable terms for themselves. It seems likely that any changes to the Twitch pay system would honour past contracts and disproportionately target those with less bargaining power.
This could be achieved through a tiered Twitch pay system – although details of said system are pretty speculative. The most obvious solution would be to give the service’s top performers a better rate to stop them from abandoning ship for greener pastures.
Another possibility is that Twitch could incentivise streamers to include more advertisements in their content. In matters of profitability, this always seems to be on the agenda; Netflix, Sony, and Microsoft are also reportedly considering introducing ads to their services to boost revenue streams.
Advertisements could also be part of the rumoured tier system, with content creators able to choose between a better Twitch pay rate with more ads or fewer ads and less pay.
Twitch has yet to respond to these rumours and reports. We’ll be sure to provide an update when there is further clarification on this matter.
