If Twitch‘s image was already in a bad state, this week it has reached its peak. The streaming company updated its branded content policy yesterday, significantly tightening its rules regarding advertising and sponsorships that streamers can engage in.
According to these new regulations, Twitch content creators will no longer be able to insert videos, audio, displays, or other types of multimedia material through their own streams (using OBS or similar programs). The company will also limit the size of sponsor logos, ensuring they do not occupy more than 3% of the screen.
Twitch makes it clear that creators will still be able to talk about sponsored products, promote them in their streams (including their own chats), unbox them, display sponsored products in the background, play sponsored video games, link to other websites in their promotions, and also insert panels from sponsor brands in their channel information displayed below the stream player.
Twitch’s new restrictions have not been well received by the majority of Twitch content creators, to the point where many have threatened to leave. Streamer Zach Bussey, who highlighted this policy update, said he would reevaluate “whether Twitch is the place I want to create content going forward.” Even the popular MrBeast hinted that he might “move” to Kick, Twitch’s new competitor, if the platform continues with these policies.
In response to the controversy, Twitch issued an apology last night, acknowledging that this new update was “too broad”: “We do not intend to limit streamers’ ability to engage in direct relationships with sponsors, and we understand that this is an important part of how streamers earn income,” the streaming service stated in a series of tweets.
“We wanted to clarify our existing ad policy, which was intended to prohibit third-party ad networks from selling in-stream video ads and display ads on Twitch, which is consistent with other services. We made a mistake with the language of the policy, and we will be rewriting the guidelines to make them clearer. Thank you for sharing your concerns, and we appreciate your feedback. We will notify the community once we have updated the language.”
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