2022 is shaping up to be a tough year for content creators and sellers trying to make a living from major technology platforms. Sellers on Amazon and Etsy are already facing increased fees and further compensation cuts that may now make their way to Twitch.
A new report quoting people familiar with compensation planning on Twitch says the company wants to incentivize streamers to run more ads in addition to considering reducing the share of subscription fees allocated to performers. Specifically, the site’s top streamers would see their subscription share drop from 70% to 50%, according to the report. The company is also planning to introduce several pay tiers with different criteria required to qualify for each. Altogether, these changes are aimed at increasing the profitability of Twitch, although this may come at the expense of the most active users in their community.
On the other hand, sources who spoke to the media regarding it said the company may consider relaxing its exclusivity restrictions, which would allow creators to stream on other platforms and potentially earn revenue. additional on these platforms as well.
The interim monetization considerations come in a stream period at Twitch. On the one hand, the company is benefiting from a pandemic-induced increase in viewership. Some 24% of American Internet users aged 16 to 64 said they had started watching more live during the pandemic, according to data from GlobalWebIndex. On the flip side though, even with this rise in views, Twitch is also facing an exodus of employees from the company’s management. Some 300 employees are said to have left Twitch last year, with another 60 in the first three months of 2022. Some top creators have also left. Over the past year, DrLupo and TimTheTatman, two prominent streamers, left the site for rival YouTube.
Twitch streamers aren’t the only ones bracing for financial pressure from their Big Tech bosses.
Earlier this year, Amazon announced that it would add a fuel and inflation surcharge (fuel surcharge and inflation) of 5% to third-party sellers who use the company’s distribution centers to offset the increased costs. In a notice to sellers seen by The Associated Press, Amazon said rising hourly wages, construction costs and new hires during the pandemic were all to blame for the increased price hikes. Still, Amazon wasn’t really struggling as a business during the pandemic. In the first quarter of 2021, the company recorded record revenue of $108.5 billion, which is almost triple its revenue compared to the same period of the previous year.
In a notice sent to vendors, the company said its costs have increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic due to increased hourly wages, the hiring of workers and the construction of new warehouses. . She said she absorbed the costs as much as possible and only increased the fees to meet ongoing costs and to be competitive with other providers. Amazon’s competitors FedEx and UPS both have fuel surcharges.
Although the company blamed inflation and rising fuel costs for the surcharge, Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the anti-monopoly group Institute for Local Self-Reliancecriticized the announcement that was made earlier this month, saying Amazon was taking advantage of the situation: Amazon continues to raise its fees on sellers who have to depend on its platform, Mitchell said, adding that the The new fees are a way to take more money out of the pockets of independent businesses and put it into Amazon’s coffers.
Amazon’s third-party marketplace, where independent merchants list millions of their products, is a big part of its business. It has regarding 2 million sellers and more than half of the products sold on Amazon.com come from these sellers.
Last year, sellers paid Amazon regarding $103 billion in fees, which was regarding 22% of the company’s revenue. The online retailer said the new fees will apply to products ordered before April 28 but shipped and delivered following that date.
At Etsy, sellers went on strike and launched a digital boycott over what they saw as exorbitant seller fee increases. Etsy recently attempted to increase seller transaction fees by 30%, which would actually increase seller fees by 5%-6.5%.
Why Top Streamers Are Leaving Twitch
At the end of 2020, Twitch accounted for over 65% of total live stream hours watched (compared to 23% for YouTube Gaming and 11% for Facebook Gaming). This is a particularly impressive feat given that YouTube and Facebook are, in terms of user numbers, much larger than Twitch. In 2021, the first two sites had almost 3 billion and 2 billion users respectively, while Twitch was visited by around 140 million unique users per month.
Building on this performance, Twitch wants to re-evaluate previous deals made when streamers had more clout.
The change has a lot to do with how Twitch is structured. Streamers have several options for making money: paid subscriptions and viewer donations; agreements with brands; and ads that work similarly to those that run before and during YouTube videos. Twitch, like most modern platforms, does better business on ads. Streamers, however, don’t like running ads because they interrupt their broadcasts, increasing the chances of viewers leaving or missing a great moment. Partly because of this misalignment of goals, Twitch tends to sign big streamers to inflate its brand not to directly generate revenue.
The public has a very ill-informed view of the Twitch economy, said a former Twitch employee. Whenever [un streamer] was paid a fortune, it was much more regarding the brand than [de retour sur investissement de l’entreprise]. Commercial activity on the big channels tends to stagnate at some point, and streamers don’t want to run ads when that’s where Twitch’s biggest potential lies.
Twitch structures contracts to reflect this. Instead of paying a lump sum when streamers sign up, many contracts also include guarantees that pay streamers additional money as they approach minimum broadcast and ad run times. But that hasn’t reliably ensured that streamers actually meet their minimum requirements. In cases like DrLupo’s, people familiar with Twitch contracts have said that Twitch is now looking to reduce the amount streamers are paid to fulfill their contracts. And that’s when he offers this kind of exclusive contracts.
Ryan Morrison, an attorney who runs Evolved, a talent agency that represents Twitch streamers like Flix “xQc” Lengyel, confirmed in 2021 that Twitch was offering fewer exclusive contracts worth less money. And apart from [l’Amrique du Nord], there are almost none at all at least in my experience , he added. That’s not to say that there aren’t some very lucrative and amazing deals out there yet, but they’re not where they used to be anymore.
Source : rapport
And you?
Do you ever go to the Twitch platform?
If so, are you going as a viewer or content broadcaster?
If not, are you going to another platform? Which ?
What do you think of the direction Twitch is gradually taking with respect to streamer compensation?
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