Last month, Twitch confirmed it was ending its 70/30 revenue split with some of its top streamers. Only the best and brightest of Twitch earn the top-tier 70/30 split but starting June 2023, those top earners will only receive a 50/50 split after their first $100,000 in revenue.
Naturally, this change did not go over well with Twitch's content creators. Even those that don't earn nearly enough to achieve the 70/30 split still wanted it as an aspirational goal, but Twitch said that the costs of sharing that much revenue were too much for even Amazon--the second largest company in the world--to bear.
At TwitchCon yesterday, Twitch chief monetization officer Mike Minton reiterated the sentiment from September, saying that such a high revenue split would not allow Twitch to continue offering global content at the quality we currently enjoy.
"The important thing for me is that me and my teams are one hundred percent focused on improving your ability to make income. At the end of the day, we're setting a framework for the long term so that you can all keep earning as long as possible and the next generation of streamers can have that same opportunity," said Minton.
"We did look at all possible options. Could we do it, could we offer 70/30 widely and broadly, and the answer is ‘no.’ It simply is not viable for Twitch in the long term."
When asked why Amazon couldn't just pick up the tab, Minton said that the commerce giant "expects Twitch to be able to thrive financially as an independent, sustainable business."
"We recognize we're in this together. You all have the hard job of creating amazing, engaging content, building communities, keeping your communities safe, and our job is to build the tools that allow you to do that while making more money," Minton concluded. "The other factor within that is the cost of live streaming. It is simply an expensive endeavor to deliver high definition low latency globally available video around the internet. That's our partnership."
TwitchCon ended yesterday with more than a few mishaps, including one streamer that broke bones in a foam pit. The whole thing sounded like a nightmare, according to one Twitter thread, which means next year’s TwitchCon will have to find a way to make up for it in Paris.