Twitch (service)
Twitch is an American video live-streaming service that focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of esports competitions, in addition to offering music broadcasts, creative content, and "in real life" streams. Twitch is operated by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon.[4] It was introduced in June 2011 as a spin-off of the general-interest streaming platform Justin.tv.[5] Content on the site can be viewed either live or via video on demand. The games shown on Twitch's current homepage are listed according to audience preference and include genres such as real-time strategy games (RTS), fighting games, racing games, and first-person shooters.[6]
Type of business
The popularity of Twitch eclipsed that of its general-interest counterpart. In October 2013, the website had 45 million unique viewers,[7] and by February 2014, it was considered the fourth-largest source of peak Internet traffic in the United States. At the same time, Justin.tv's parent company was re-branded as Twitch Interactive to represent the shift in focus when Justin.tv was getting shut down in August 2014.[8] The same month, the service was acquired by Amazon for US$970 million,[9][10] which later led to the introduction of synergies with the company's subscription service Amazon Prime.
By 2015, Twitch had more than 100 million viewers per month.[11] In 2017, Twitch remained the leading live-streaming video service for video games in the US, and had an advantage over YouTube Gaming, which shut down its standalone app in May 2019.[12][13][14] As of February 2020, it had three million broadcasters monthly and 15 million active users daily, with 1.4 million average concurrent users.[15][16] As of May 2018, Twitch had over 27,000 partner channels.[15][17] As of October 2023, Twitch was the 37th-most-visited website in the world with 20.26% of its traffic coming from the United States, followed by Germany with 7.08% and South Korea with 5.49%.[18][19] In late 2023, Twitch announced that they would stop operating in South Korea in 2024 because of its network fee policy, citing prohibitive costs.
History
Founding and initial growth (2007–2013)
When Justin.tv was launched in 2007 by Justin Kan and Emmett Shear, two recent Yale graduates, the site was divided into several content categories. The gaming category grew especially fast, and became the most popular content on the site.[20] In June 2011,[7]: 40 the company decided to spin off the gaming content as TwitchTV, inspired by the term twitch gameplay. It launched officially in public beta on June 6, 2011.[5] Since then, Twitch has attracted more than 35 million unique visitors a month.[21][22] Twitch had about 80 employees in June 2013,[23] which increased to 100 by December 2013.[7] The company was headquartered in San Francisco's Financial District.[7]
Twitch has been supported by significant investments of venture capital, with US$15 million in 2012 (on top of US$7 million originally raised for Justin.tv),[24][25] and US$20 million in 2013.[26] Investors during three rounds of fund raising leading up to the end of 2013 included Draper Associates, Bessemer Venture Partners and Thrive Capital.[7]: 40 In addition to the influx of venture funding, it was believed in 2013 that the company had become profitable.[7]: 40
Especially since the shutdown of its direct competitor Own3d.tv in early 2013, Twitch has become the most popular e-sports streaming service by a large margin, leading some to conclude that the website has a "near monopoly on the market".[27] Competing video services, such as YouTube and Dailymotion, began to increase the prominence of their gaming content to compete, but have had a much smaller impact so far.[28][29] As of mid-2013, there were over 43 million viewers on Twitch monthly, with the average viewer watching an hour and a half a day.[30] By February 2014, Twitch was the fourth largest source of Internet traffic during peak times in the United States, behind Netflix, Google, and Apple. Twitch made up 1.8% of total US Internet traffic during peak periods.[31]
In late 2013, particularly due to increasing viewership, Twitch had issues with lag and low frame rates in Europe.[32] Twitch has subsequently added new servers in the region.[33] Also in order to address these problems, Twitch implemented a new video system shown to be more efficient than the previous system. Initially, the new video system was criticized by users because it caused a significant stream delay, interfering with broadcaster–viewer interaction.[34] Twitch staff said that the increased delay was likely temporary and at the time, was an acceptable tradeoff for the decrease in buffering.[35]
Content moderation and restrictions
Copyrighted content
On August 6, 2014, Twitch announced that all on-demand videos on Twitch became subject to acoustic fingerprinting using software provided by content protection company Audible Magic; if copyrighted music (particularly, songs played by users from outside of the game they are playing) is detected, the 30-minute portion of the video which contains the music will be muted. Live broadcasts were not subject to these filters.[243][244] A system was available for those who believed they were inappropriately affected and had rights to the music they used to challenge the filtering.[245] Twitch offered a selection of royalty-free music for streamers to use, which was expanded upon later in January 2015.[137] The audio filtering system, along with the lack of communication surrounding the changes in general, proved to be controversial among users. In a Reddit AMA, co-founder Emmett Shear admitted that his staff had "screwed up" and should have provided advance warning of the changes, and promised that Twitch had "absolutely no intention" of implementing audio filtering on live broadcasts.[246]
In June 2020, Twitch received a large wave of DMCA takedown notices aimed at year-old VODs and "clips" (short segments of streams that can be captured by users) that contain copyrighted music from 2017 to 2019. Twitch complied with the takedowns and also issued a number of copyright strikes against viewers. Concerned streamers were notified that they should remove all VODs and clips if not certain they did not contain copyrighted material. This provoked major backlash, both at the loss of prior content but also based on viability concerns due to an inability to review or even rapidly delete content. There were also complaints based that strikes were being issued on viewer-created clips, even where the streamer-created content was deleted.[247][248][249]
On September 15, 2020, Twitch signed a licensing agreement with the French performance society SACEM, allowing composers and publishers to collect royalties whenever their music is streamed in France. Twitch already had licensing deals with the American societies ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and Global Music Rights.[250]
To address these issues and also build upon the growth of music-based content on Twitch, Twitch introduced an extension known as "Soundtrack" in September 2020, which plays rights-cleared music with curated genre-based playlists. It is contained within a separate stream that is not recorded with the VODs,[251] and had agreements with 24 music distributors and independent record labels at launch.[252][253][254] A group of US performance rights and music associations accused Twitch of designing Soundtrack in such a way as to avoid payment of mechanical and synchronization licenses—claims which Twitch has defended.[255][256]
In September 2021, Twitch and the National Music Publishers' Association signed a creative partnership.[257]
Mature content
Twitch users are not allowed to stream any game that is rated "Adults Only" (AO) in the United States by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), regardless of its rating in any other geographical region, and any game that contains "overtly sexual content" or "gratuitous violence", or content which violates the terms of use of third-party services.[258][259]
Twitch has also explicitly banned specific games from streaming, regardless of rating; this includes games such as BMX XXX, eroge visual novel games (such as Dramatical Murder), HuniePop, Rinse and Repeat, Second Life, and Yandere Simulator.[259][260][261][262] The banning of Yandere Simulator was criticized by YandereDev, the developer of the game. He believed that the game was being arbitrarily singled out with no explanation, as Twitch has not banned other games with similarly excessive sexual or violent content such as Mortal Kombat X, Grand Theft Auto, or The Witcher 3.[261][263]
Twitch took temporary action in May 2019 after channels related to the video game Artifact began to be used for inappropriate content. Artifact, a major game by Valve, had lost most of its audience in just months from its release, and by late May 2019, several popular livestreamers commented that the total viewership for Artifact streams had dropped to near zero. In the days that followed, several streamers started to make streams purporting to be Artifact gameplay but was trolling or other off-topic content. Initially these new streams were playing with the viewers or were jokes, such as showing animal videos or League of Legends matches. After a few days, other Artifact channel streams appeared containing content that was against the terms of Twitch's use policy, including full copyrighted movies, pornography, Nazi propaganda, and at least one stream that showed the entirety of the shooter's video from the Christchurch mosque shootings. The titles of such streams were usually presented to imply they were showing other content while waiting in queue for Artifact matches as to appear legitimate. As word of these streams in the Artifact section grew, Twitch took action, deleting the account that streamed the Christchurch shooting.[264] Twitch then took steps to temporarily ban new accounts from streaming until they can resolve the issue.[265] By June 2019, Twitch started taking legal actions against one hundred "John Doe" streamers in a California court, accusing them of trademark infringement, breach of contract, fraud, and unlawful use of the service that was harming and scaring away users of the service.[266][267]
In early 2021, some streams began to use their Twitch channel to broadcast themselves from hot tubs while wearing swimsuits. Twitch considered these streams to be "not advertiser friendly", banning some of the more predominant channels that had taken this route. In May 2021, Twitch clarified in a "Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches" post that it was not trying to discriminate against women or others through this action, but through content that they deemed to be "sexually suggestive".[268] In June that year, Twitch also took similar action against users that performed yoga while at the same time made autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) sounds via their microphones, which Twitch also stated was approaching sexual content.[269]
In December 2023, shortly after instating a new policy that allowed specific instances of adult content, Twitch reversed its decision to allow depictions of "fictionalized nudity" following backlash from users and streamers. The CEO of Twitch, Dan Clancy, acknowledged that the new policy was a step too far and that distinguishing between digital art and photography was challenging. As a result, Twitch will no longer permit depictions of real or fictional nudity, regardless of the medium. The company also removed content that violated the updated policy and issued channel enforcements. While some changes to Twitch's Sexual Content Policy remain in effect, such as allowing content that highlights certain body parts and specific dances without a label, games featuring nudity or sexual violence as a core focus are still prohibited.[270]
Hate speech and harassment
In February 2018, Twitch updated its acceptable content policies to direct that any content that it deemed hateful be suspended from its platform.[271]
In June 2020, a number of women stepped forward with accusations towards several streamers on Twitch and other services related to sexual misconduct and harassment claims.[272] Twitch stated it would review all reported incidents and comply with law enforcement in any investigative efforts. However, several popular streamers on Twitch's service believed that the platform could do more to evaluate the accused individuals, prevent incidents, and protect others in the future, and used June 24, 2020, as a Twitch blackout day, not streaming any content through Twitch to show their support.[273] By the evening of June 24, 2020, Twitch had placed several bans on the accounts of those accused after completing their investigation, and stated in a blog post they would be forwarding additional details to law enforcement.[274]
Twitch temporarily suspended an account belonging to then US President Donald Trump's campaign on June 29, 2020. Twitch stated that "hateful conduct is not allowed" as the reason for the suspension.[275]
Twitch announced a new policy towards harassment and hateful content in December 2020 that would take effect on January 22, 2021, aimed to better protect marginalized users of the service. While the new policy is more strict, Twitch said that this also includes a larger sliding scale of remedies or punishments to better deal with edge cases, such as temporarily blocking one's channel for a short time rather than a full ban. The new rules include a ban on imagery containing the Confederate Flag, and 'racist emotes', though the list of such emotes has not been clarified yet.[276] The new policy included banning words that were considered sexual insults, such as "incel" and "virgin" when used for harassment. The banned words included "simp", which raised criticism by streamers and long-time viewers. While its slang origins have defined "simp" derogatorily as "a man who invests a lot of time and energy into women who don't want him", the term had become common on Twitch as an insult related to men being nice to women on the service or simply to refer to a person with loyalty to another. Twitch, in response, clarified that penalties for using these terms would only be enforced if they were being used in harassment of other users.[277][278][279][280]
On December 4, 2020, Twitch removed the "blind playthrough" tag due to concerns of ableism that it may be offensive to those who are visually impaired. Suggestions for non-offensive and more neutral labels include "first playthrough", "undiscovered," and "no spoilers."[281]
A popular feature of Twitch is the ability to "raid" another channel, where multiple users, coordinated from a different Twitch channel or another social media service, all join a target channel to provide support and encouragement. This is typically used to help boost the popularity of the target channel, particularly if the raid is organized by a popular streamer. Twitch had officially supported this type of activity since 2017 with the ability for a streamer to send all of their viewers to another channel as a raid.[282] However, around mid-2021, new types of "hate raids" began to occur with increasing frequency on Twitch. In these cases, numerous users would flood a channel and its chat with messages of harassment and hate towards the streamer as a form of cyberbullying. Most of these users are typically from automated bots, which made it difficult for channel moderators to deal with the amount of messages.[283] Despite warning Twitch about these hate raids, Twitch had shown little action towards stopping them, leading numerous streams to organize a "#ADayOffTwitch" on September 1, 2021, as a form of protest in anticipation that Twitch will find ways to take action against them.[284][285] After acknowledging a problem with dealing with hate raids, Twitch launched a lawsuit in early September 2021 against two individuals they had determined to be responsible for managing several hate raids after permanently banning their accounts.[286] At the end of September 2021, Twitch introduced tools for streamers to be able to limit who may participate in their chat as to prevent hate raids. These tools allow streamers to limit chat to those that have verified their phone number or email with Twitch, as well as to those that have followed their channel for a minimum amount of time.[287]
In May 2022, following the mass shooting in Buffalo, the New York state attorney general's office announced an investigation into multiple online platforms, including Twitch, to determine their part in platforming or promoting hateful content. The investigation will also focus on the platforms' moderation efforts. A spokesperson for Twitch stated that the service would comply with the investigation.[288]
Extremism
In April 2021, it was reported that Twitch was providing a financial lifeline to extremists such as QAnon adherents and far-right influencers.[289] Another report in August and September 2021, by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue also identified Twitch as a platform where far right extremists run rampant. Clips from far-right extremists, such as 'Omegle Redpilling' become quite popular before they are removed from the platform and in some cases, are not removed at all according to ISD.[290][291]
Gambling
On September 20, 2022, Twitch announced that beginning October 18, it would prohibit the streaming of slots, roulette and dice games on gambling websites not licensed in the US or "other jurisdictions that provide sufficient consumer protection". The policy change does not affect sports betting, fantasy sports, and poker.[292][293][294] Gambling has been extremely popular on Twitch for years, being one of the most popular types of content on the platform, with many streamers being sponsored by online gambling services; however, it has also been controversial, with prominent streamers such as Mizkif and Pokimane speaking out against the negative effects of gambling streams.[292][293] The announcement came shortly after a popular streamer admitted he spent $200,000 in donations on CS:GO skin gambling.[295]
Internet censorship
As of September 20, 2018, the Twitch website is blocked and the app is blocked from the Apple App Store in China.[296]
In India, Twitch was reportedly blocked by Reliance-owned telecommunication company Jio as well as internet service providers JioFiber and Hathway in September 2020 as some users were illegally streaming Indian Premier League cricket matches on the platform.[297]
Slovakia's government reportedly blocked Twitch in June 2021 after a streamer in the country with around 35,000 followers was found streaming poker, which was in violation of local gambling laws.[298][299]
On July 4, 2022, the Iranian government blocked access to Twitch for Iranian Internet users.[300]
On February 23, 2024, Twitch was blocked in Turkey per a complaint by the country's lotteries commission.[301] It was reopened 6 days later, at 29th of February.
