Twitch’s new Partner Plus program was designed to give streamers increased shares in their subscription revenues, however industry experts have said to take a second look before jumping in to celebrate.
Twitch announced last Thursday, streamers qualifying for Partner Plus would gain a 70/30 split of revenue from subscribers. Most streamers earn a 50/50 split. Twitch explained those inducted into the program would receive 70% of subscriptions for one year, until they reach their first $100,000 USD.
Once that amount is reached, the shares drop to 50%.
Not all streamers qualify and some requirements include being a Twitch partner and having at least 350 monthly recurring subscriptions. Many are outraged learning it could be as little as 2.5% or around 1,066.
Streams Charts, Twitch analytics service decide on this after analysing how many partners were active, or who was streaming at least once in the last three months, and how many had over 350 monthly subscriptions.
Out of over 71,000, only around 42,000 were active in the last three months, and of those only 1,066 had at least 350 monthly subscriptions.
Twitch’s EMEA communication manager, Ashley Lloyd said, “The only official/confirmed public data that is available on Twitch’s monetisation products is the following: Each month, over 1M streamers earn revenue on Twitch, including earnings from subs, Bits, and ads.”
Many didn’t believe this data, with some stating the service estimated the subscriptions and these aren’t always accurate, meaning more streamers could qualify for Partner Plus.
It was reported the service isn’t know for subscriptions data. and doesn’t consider things like offline subscriptions and certain auto-renewed subscriptions.
It was stated the data discrepancies exist with large streamers who would qualify for Partner Plus due to having thousands of subscriptions.
The product manager for Streams Charts said, “The data is pretty accurate for medium-sized and small partners, with a slight abnormality. To be maximally honest, for our ‘2.5% research,’ these numbers can be considered as estimated values (of course only Twitch knows the real ones), but they are close enough to reality, as actually mentioned by the streamers.”
There has been intense pushback faced by Twitch from creators in recent weeks due to new restrictive ad rules, scrapped after streamers criticised them and claimed they negatively affect the bottom line.
In just days past, the platform also lost two of its biggest creators, xQc and Amouranth, to rival platform Kick.
Reported originally by The New York Times, xQc, real name Félix Lengyel, made a deal with Kick with a contract worth $70 million USD, and a $30 million USD in additional incentives, possibly pushing the total to $100 million USD.
Two days after, Amouranth, real name Kaitlyn Siraqusa announced she would be going to Kick.
She stated in a staged video that she was looking for a millon-dollar contract like Lengyel’s.
“Hey so, the $100-million USD deals have started. Can I get one of those?”
The amount of her contract is currently unknown.