After a harrowing couple of days and a miasma of frustration from creators, Twitch is reneging on their initial plan to implement a controversial and limiting set of guidelines for advertisements. This reversal represents a rare, and welcome, moment of collaboration between a platform and its creators.
Twitch’s initial ad rules would ban the most-popular forms of advertising and restrict users’ abilities to monetize sponsorships. This shift, slated to go into effect on July 1st of this year, would also affect charities and, of course, the brands that sponsor creators.
But after Twitch creators levied monolithic frustration at the streaming platform, Twitch released a statement that appears to decry many of their proposed changes.
“Yesterday, we released new Branded Content Guidelines that impacted your ability to work with sponsors to increase your income from streaming. These guidelines are bad for you and bad for Twitch, and we are removing them immediately,” reads the statement.
“We will not prevent your ability to enter into direct relationships with sponsors – you will continue to own and control your sponsorship business…We appreciate your feedback and help in making this change.”
It’s a best-case-scenario outcome that is all the more refreshing because of how rare this kind of thing is. A community banded together in protest of a draconian proposal, Twitch made the right call in reversing their stance, and creators can continue advertising as usual.
However, any celebration of Twitch’s willingness to listen and respond to its users is somewhat tinged by the excessively poor oversight that created this problem to begin with. Some may recall similar instances regarding Microsoft’s attempt to kill the used games market (back in 2013) and their (hastily reversed) decision to double the cost of Xbox Live in 2021; Microsoft deserves praise for not following through on a bad decision, but they still came up with the associated ideas.
It’s much the same with Twitch. As long as media companies seek to exploit the people who keep them afloat–users and creators alike–they will continue to come up with tone-deaf concepts that fail to honor virtually everyone. Twitch was smart to listen to their community this time, but this will absolutely happen again if they don’t learn the actual lesson here: that creators will jump ship if their income streams are disrupted, especially if arbitrarily.
For now, Twitch creators can rest assured that their sponsorships will remain intact, their advertising processes will continue to be supported, and the platform that they have called home is considering their best interests now, however belatedly that may be.
Jack Lloyd has a BA in Creative Writing from Forest Grove's Pacific University; he spends his writing days using his degree to pursue semicolons, freelance writing and editing, oxford commas, and enough coffee to kill a bear. His infatuation with rain is matched only by his dry sense of humor.
