Twitch not backing down from 50/50 sub revenue split

Kick has continued to lure in streamers by promising a much more lucrative revenue split when it comes to subscriptions. But Twitch doubled down on its decision to split sub-revenue 50/50.

Twitch has been going through a lot of controversies in the past few years. Streamers have continued to point out inconsistencies in its treatment of different content creators, pointing out possible biases. The creation of the hot tub category and then banning gambling were also big sources of disdain for many streamers. The final straw for a few streamers was the 50/50 sub split for bigger influencers, meaning 50% of subscription revenue would go to Twitch.

Seeing the continued controversies over at Twitch, Kick started to amp up its campaign against the rival platform by telling streamers that they had a much better revenue split (with 95% going to creators). Kick has also offered to gamble, although it seems as though the platform may lack regulation at all.

Despite pressure from Kick, Twitch is not changing its mind.

Twitch is not changing the revenue split

Twitch’s chief product officer Tom Verrilli and chief monetization officer Mike Minton recently spoke with The Verge about Twitch’s monetization and ad incentive program. In the interview, Twitch stated that the 50/50 split is here to stay.

“We talked a lot about how we’re in this together, and part of that is innovation. We are committed to continuing to improve our monetization products and building new monetization products, and at the end of the day, we are committed to increasing the amount of money a streamer earns,” Minton said.

Basically, Twitch doesn’t plan to change the revenue split in favor of streamers. Instead, the streaming platform wants to focus on making Twitch more lucrative for streamers with the addition of the ad incentive program and sponsorships. While Minton explained that the ad incentive program has allowed streamers to “clearly see the value in running ads,” streamers have actually been fighting against the influx of ads quite heavily.

“We want to make it easier for creators to take their amazing Twitch content and distribute it,” Virelli said. “But we also need to take more responsibility for delivering viewers straight to streamers while they are on Twitch.”

Verelli then discussed a new feature called Guest Star, an “integrated tool that allows streamers to easily feature other creators or their audience in a livestream.” But it’s not clear what this feature’s details are quite yet. Still, Verelli believes it’s the “next evolution” of Twitch chat.

Twitch has been dealing with a lot of internal struggles the past few weeks. Emmett Shear stepped down as CEO and over 400 employees are being laid off.