Earlier in the week, popular Twitch streamer Trainwreck went on a long rant on Twitter using the Twitlonger feature to address his departure from Twitch and switch to Kick.com. In the post, Trainwreck covered a wide range of topics with respect to Twitch: favoritism, inconsistent policies, ambiguous bans, pay cuts, the 50-50 revenue split, and more.
Trainwreck isn’t the first Twitch streamer to share some of these concerns regarding the video streaming platform either. It’s time to analyze whether these arguments against Twitch have any merit.
@ Trainwreck
Trainwreck’s Rant Will Reverberate Throughout The Streaming World
At the very heart of Trainwreck’s rant was how Twitch is not grateful to their content creators. He suggested that this should not be the case for a company that claims to be profitable and has many advertisers on their payroll.
Trainwreck’s rant, at times, does seem warranted. This is especially the case with regard to Twitch’s proposed 70-30 split that never materialized. What makes it worse for the likes of Trainwreck is that YouTube never really had any trouble applying this 70-30 split.
To make matters worse for Twitch, Trainwreck spoke in glowing terms about Kick.com. He highlighted how this alternative video streaming site puts the streamers first, how it has a 95-5 split, and gives the streamers 100% of the tips. He added that this is only possible because of advertisements. It remains to be seen how many other popular streamers will join him, but the rant was fairly compelling.
How Does Twitch Tackle This? Do They Have To?
On the one hand, Twitch can be silent and let things be as they are. They’ll probably consider themselves too big to be disheartened by a Twitlonger post, even if this post comes from someone who’s considerably popular within the Twitch space.
Someone else could always take up Trainwreck’s spot and keep the wheel spinning. Twitch has suggested that they have got features that help streamers grow their brand. Twitch’s chief product officer Tom Verrilli has stated that features like Chat Activity and Chat Cues are there to accomplish just that. All of this mostly looks like deflection tactics from the higher-ups at Twitch.
All that being said, Twitch can’t take this issue lightly any longer. The company suffered a massive viewership drop in November 2022 – 1.69 billion hours of watched content, a 10% drop compared to October, and the lowest it has been since September 2020.
PLATFORM UPDATE
Read: https://t.co/r1hBNpRQaK
— Trainwreck (@Trainwreckstv) December 5, 2022
Is Twitch Not As Popular Anymore?
Twitch can handle a drop in viewership and an angry streamer, but tackling both simultaneously is something else. Twitch remains a widely popular video streaming service, but the service certainly gained a lot of new viewership thanks to the pandemic.
With the wider world recovering over time and no longer spending as much time on screens at home, Twitch has got to figure out another way to get those viewership numbers up. Twitch has traditionally not done too well with viewership numbers towards the end of a year, as that is the time when people are on holiday. Many of the esports events are also concluded by this time of the year. Consider that, perhaps Trainwreck’s rant was a strategic one – to catch Twitch at their most vulnerable stage of the year. Whatever the case may be, Twitch has to start addressing these concerns quickly.
Kick.com might not be a substantial rival for the time being, but YouTube Gaming already is. YouTube remains the most accessible video-streaming site, so Twitch has to develop some creative solutions. Twitch had carved up an identity as the video streaming service specific to video game enthusiasts, but that might not be the case for long if YouTube keeps eating into that market. In the end, it will be a battle of Twitch vs. YouTube.
