Twitch Partner Plus Controversy

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Overview

Twitch Partner Plus Controversy refers to the controversial new revenue split option announced by Twitch to its streamers in mid-June 2023. The 70/30 revenue split, coming after the highly contentious forced 50/50 split in ad revenue across the platform and the controversial branded content guideline changes, angered many streamers and was seen as a backtracking decision of the platform's previously announced hardline stance on making the 50/50 split across the platform. The event generated notable backlash and viral discussions, as well as memes and other reactions.

Background

In late September 2022, Twitch announced a change to the revenue split system for its content creators and subscriptions, posted via a blog by its CEO Dan Clancy.^[5] In the past, Twitch had several private agreements with various streamers on what level of split would occur — meaning that when someone used $5 to sub to a streamer, how much of that would go towards the streamer vs. Twitch varied, with some streamers securing deals as high as 90 percent total sub revenue being theirs to keep.^[6]

In our latest blog post, we tackle a topic that's been at the forefront of the community for some time – the rev split.

We also provide a related update around monetization for a subset of Partners.

Read here: https://t.co/zP6xcCtJAQ pic.twitter.com/KAwOMDIkmm

— Twitch (@Twitch) September 21, 2022

This policy of individualized deals was changed following the September 21st, 2022, announcement so that after June 1st, 2023, the vast majority of streamers would have their revenue split forcibly changed to 50/50 after the creator made their first $100,000 per year on the platform, angering many streamers and causing them to leave. This controversial decision ultimately led to viral discussions, reactions and memes being made over the following months, such as the one posted to /r/PayMoneyWubby on June 6th, 2023, by the Redditor u/ScottyG250^[1] (shown below).

Developments

On June 15th, 2023, Twitch announced via Twitter and a livestream, that they would be introducing a new Twitch Partner Plus program, which would give only streamers that had over 350 concurrent recurring subscriptions, not including prime or gifted subs, a 70/30 split until they made their first 100,000 for the year. An infographic that came out taking into account the requirements needed to hit Partner Plus showed that out of 42,000 Twitch Partnered streamers, only 2.5%, equating to 1,066 total partners, would be eligible for the 70/30 split, as shown by Twitter user @LowcoTV^[2] (shown below).

Online Reactions

Reactions to the announcement on June 15th, 2023, quickly appeared online as streamers became aware of the news and reacted to it while livestreaming. Various content creators, some of whom met the new criteria to be a "Partner Plus," pulled up the information and reacted to change, with some saying that it is harmful to smaller streamers and that the original deals and metrics made beforehand were far better for the creators on the platform as a whole.

These views were expressed in reactions by streamers like Esfand^[3] of OTK and Harris Heller^[4] (who was recently involved in a controversy with Twitch's Creative Director quarreling in his stream chat days before), which were later uploaded to YouTube that day (shown below).