Twitch’s mid-life platform crisis continues. After rolling out controversial new 50/50 revenue splits for top streamers last fall, the massively popular online gaming hangout is now announcing a new “Partner Plus Program” that will return certain channels to the previous 70/30 split, but with tons of caveats. It’s already not going over well.
“We want to help streamers keep doing what they love, so we can all keep loving what they do,” Twitch tweeted on June 15. “Today we’re announcing the Partner Plus program, a new program for streamers to build toward as they continue to grow their businesses,” began the blog post it linked to. From there it outlined how the new program will work when it launches in October, including a bunch of hyper-specific details.
To qualify for Partner Plus, streamers will have to already be an existing Twitch Partner and maintain at least 350 recurring paid subscriptions (not gifted or Prime ones) for three consecutive months. They will then automatically be enrolled in the program for 12 months, at which point they’ll get to keep 70 percent of every subscription, including gifted and Prime ones. But only up to the first $100,000. After that, revenue goes back to the 50/50 split.
It’s seemingly aimed at throwing a bone to a very particular subset of big and growing streamers to prevent them from leaving the platform, while not really changing much for everyone else. While some current reactions to the platform see it as a promising first-step, others are treating it like too little, too late.
Twitch has been on the struggle bus for a while now. Following a series of scandals last year around gambling and deepfake porn, the company announced a new CEO and hundreds of layoffs in early 2023. Most recently, Twitch announced and then quickly walked back new advertising rules after a massive backlash and some of the Amazon-owned platform’s biggest personalities threatened to bail. The company also continues to be criticized over its baseline 50/50 revenue split, which is lower that competing platforms like YouTube and Kick.
“We have a job here which is to do whatever we can for you while running this business sustainably over time,” recently promoted Twitch CEO, Dan Clancy, said during a livestream about the new program. “It’s really important in terms of what Twitch does I think one of the reasons the community gets worked up as we do things is because you care so much about Twitch because it does matter in your lives so the best way to say it is we’re always looking for ways we can extend more benefits to streamers.”
