Twitch criticized for “selling viewbots” with stream Boost as “pay-to-win”



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Twitch has announced plans to allow viewers to scale up streams with payouts, with the goal of elevating smaller channels. However, the initiative met with a quick reaction within the community, labeled “selling viewbots”.

In 2021, Twitch made several changes affecting both creators and viewers. These include several different features, including lower sub-prices for viewers in other countries, as well as the addition of phone number verification options to tackle ongoing hate raid issues.

In Twitch’s “Patch Notes” stream on September 30, DJ Wheat was joined by Product Manager Jacob Rosok, who spoke to viewers about the boost feature.

“The communities want us to make the boost more available, and second, the communities want us to make it more effective,” said Rosok. “We’re going to run a small experiment, over the next few weeks, with a select group of designers.

“In this experiment, we will allow viewers to directly purchase Boost for their favorite creators.”

Streamers criticize new Boost options

This new feature would essentially allow viewers to pay for a streamer in order to gain more visibility on the site, recommending the channel to more people. Twitch’s intention is to help grow smaller communities.

However, that’s not an idea that many other streamers seem to agree with. Some have called it “pay to win,” and others argue that it will actually benefit streamers who have a large fan base to begin with, as they will have more viewers willing to pay.

YouTuber CaptainSauce called it “the grossest thing I’ve seen done on a new media platform.” partner streamer Naysy called the idea “exploitative”.

Sodapoppin, who has more than 3 million followers on Twitch, also scoffed at the proposal, joking that “nobody cares about little streamers” and that he will “boost” his channel to stay ahead.

Longtime streamer CohhCarnage, another big streamer on Twitch who was an early member of Twitch’s Security Advisory Council, said he didn’t have the words to explain how much he disliked not “that direction”.

Some have even pointed out that this new feature may in fact go against Twitch’s own guidelines, which state that “reselling Twitch services or features” is prohibited.

At this time, this feature is only performed as a small test, so potentially, given the backlash, it may be suspended by Twitch after the testing period.



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