Is Twitch Dying ? Why Creators Are Considering Alternatives

Whether or not Twitch is dying is a question a lot of people have had on their minds recently. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding Twitch this year, which has come to be expected. However, lately it feels like there’s been a huge shift in how people think of Twitch. A lot of people are unhappy with Twitch’s inconsistency when it comes to enforcing their banning rules. An increasing number of content creators are also considering alternatives such as YouTube or Facebook gaming due to the new revenue split and Twitch’s very strict contracts.

What Does The Data Say ?

In order to gauge whether or not Twitch really is dying we need to take a look at some data and understand what it means. Streamlabs published a Q2 live streaming report with great data from the three major platforms, Twitch, YouTube and Facebook. At a glance the data shows us that there’s an industry wide decline in all metrics.

Unique Channels

We will use their unique channels metric in order to compare the decline in YouTube vs Twitch.

Number of unique channels streaming on Twitch declined by 12% compared to previous quarter.
Number of unique channels streaming on YouTube declined by 12.6% compared to previous quarter.

Based on this metric alone it would seem to indicate that Twitch is still holding strong. With that being said, it’s important to note that this is data published back in August for Q2.

New Streamer Trends

As mentioned some of the data above may not be a great reflection of the current state in light of recent events. Another way we can see which platform new streamers might be considering is by comparing search trends for each platform.

The two search terms we thought would give us the most accurate data was “how to stream on Twitch” and “how to stream on YouTube”.

This graph we created represents the search volumes of each term over the last 12 months. As you can see in the last few months the interest in streaming on YouTube grew significantly closer to Twitch. Whilst Twitch has still never been surpassed it does tell us something very interesting about YouTube.

Despite Twitch being an absolute titan and still holding the largest percent of market share, it seems like it’s no longer the only platform that new and existing streamers are seriously considering.

Although Twitch is much further ahead, if this trend continues of more streamers deciding to stream on YouTube, you can see how over time YouTube will start to become more and more dominant.

If Twitch Is Dying Then What's Causing It ?

It’s not for no reason that so many people are now wondering if Twitch is on it’s way out. As of late it seems like there is an endless source of controversy surrounding Twitch. We will discuss these controversies and how they could negatively impact both the creators of Twitch and the sentiment surrounding it as a platform.

Revenue Split Changes

You’ve probably heard about the major change from the leading livestream platform Twitch recently. In a controversial announcement Twitch said they would be changing the 70/30 revenue split for top streamers in favour of a 50/50 split. As you can imagine they received a lot backlash from this. In response many streamers have claimed they will begin to migrate to other platforms.

As you can imagine, when a streamer changes platform so too will a majority of their viewers.