Mentioned in this article
- Twitch has announced a new “subscriber-only” stream feature for broadcasters.
- The feature creates an effective “pay-per-view” element to Twitch.
- Numerous developers have terms of service for their games that explicitly forbid PPV.
Twitch’s 
new Subscriber Stream feature that allows content creators to broadcast exclusively to their paid subscription base may have less of an impact than it was initially speculated to have when it was unveiled last week.
Twitch Partners and Affiliates gain “subscribers” when a normal viewer or follower of a given Twitch channel pay $5 USD, and sometimes more, to be given “subscriber” status (Amazon Prime subscribers also get “Twitch Prime,” which allows them one free subscription to a channel per month) . The benefits of being a subscriber often times vary from channel to channel, but the basic benefits typically include extra access to the channels chat function as well as “emotes” that can be used across Twitch.
As a way to increase the number of ways that streamers can incentivize paying for subscriptions, Twitch began beta testing for these Subscriber Streams on June 26. In order to participate in the beta Twitch Partners and Affiliates needed to have at least 90 uniques days as a Partner of Affiliate and have no Twitch Community Guideline violations against then in the last 90 unique days.
Shortly after testing began though, numerous people in the gaming community began to notice that these subscriber-only streams, which effectively serve as a form of pay-to-view, could be interpreted as a violation of some game developers’ terms of service.
The video policy for Valve , developer of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2 , states that monetizing videos and content of their games is acceptable, but videos must be “non-commercial.”
“By that we mean you can’t charge users to view or access your videos,” the policy states. “You also can’t sell or license your videos to others for a payment of any kind.”
Blizzard Entertainment , which makes Overwatch and Hearthstone , has a policy that reads similarly.
“Neither you nor the operator of any website where your Production(s) may be viewed can force a viewer to pay a “fee” to be able to view your Production(s),” Blizzard’s policy says.
Riot Games’ policy follows the same trend as Blizzard and Valve. However, Riot’s policy does leave open the caveat that a license agreement with the developer is a possibility.
“You may not create commercial Projects, including any Project that crowdsources any portion of its funding, any Project that involves a business or legal entity, or any Project where you gate the content with a paywall (e.g., Patreon, YouTube Premium, etc.) without a written license agreement from us. We have only three exceptions.”
While the inability to play games by many of the top developers serves as a hindrance to some influencers, it doesn’t completely negate the ability for streamers to use the subscriber-only streaming feature. It could just prevent them from playing certain games that they might typically rely on to produce their most popular content.
Twitch has not yet responded to a request for comments from The Esports Observer about its new feature. We have also reached out to several developers but have yet to receive a response as of this writing. This article will be updated later as comments are provided.
