It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Twitch has seen a drop in viewers recently. The whole sponsorship change debacle and subsequent back-peddling was a big blow to its prestige. Now, the streaming powerhouse is making various moves seemingly in an attempt to win back viewer trust and stop more streamers from jumping ship to other streaming services — namely Kick, which is coming in swinging. At TwitchCon Paris over the weekend, the company unveiled a bunch of major changes to its service. They’ve been detailed in a blog post, but we’re here to break it all down. Let’s take a look.
Changes Being Made By Twitch To Get Back Viewers
Improvements to the Clip Editor
- Ported to mobile
- Streamers can give editors access
- Sharing directly to social media
- Mark clips as featured
- More Planned for the future
New Discovery Feed
- Similar to YouTube Discovery page
- Find content related to interests
- Coming in fall 2023
Stories In Twitch
- Similar to every other social media platform
- Can share clips, pictures, text updates and polls
- Launching in October
Grow and Stream Together with Guest Star Updates
- Making collaborations easier
- Up to 5 people can stream together
Promoting Shared Mod Comments
- Share banned info from last year returns
- Share information between streamers about why someone was banned
- Launches in September
New Alert System
- Alert Randomizer
- Emote customization options
- Alerts integration into Shield Mode
More Stream Events
- First-time-you-streamed anniversaries
- Streamer birthdays
Giving Streamers More Control Over Ad Breaks
- Chat Countdown Timer before ad
- Coming this month to Ads manager
A lot of these changes are a step in the right direction for Twitch. And as mentioned in the blog post, Twitch has taken all the criticism seriously and is thinking ahead now. Even with these changes, the main issue streamers have been battling is the unfair revenue split. With other platforms offering better splits, Twitch will have to make a lot more changes than the ones announced on TwitchCon if it wants to compete and not lose more streamers.
