Twitch Branded Content Changes — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Twitch has announced a major change to the way that branded content works on their website. This is potentially affecting every broadcaster, tons of events, agencies, and the entire monetization

[00:12] structure of Twitch. So we absolutely have to talk about it. We're going to explain everything, break everything down. Today there's a lot of misunderstanding about this. I'm Devin Nash. I own an agency called Novo. Novo is an agency that works with brands to do advertising campaigns across the internet

[00:27] and predominantly influencer marketing. Let's break into what this is. I'm going to do what, I'm going to do why, and I'm going to do who it affects. So section one is going to be what. Basically, this page here was updated yesterday, as of the time of this recording, June 6th.

[00:44] And then Twitch has done some announcements, so we're going to go through. And this is basically an announcement that they are changing some of the rules about how advertising appears on Twitch. Now, I'm not going to go through the entire thing.

[00:56] I'm just going to go through kind of what's important. But there's a couple of – so the first thing here is that they want every streamer to use their new branded content disclosure tool. This is not a big deal. This just means that basically if you've ever been a YouTuber or a creator, you have to check a box that says includes paid promotion.

[01:13] This is a FCC requirement to announce to people that something is sponsored or not. And you'll just see like a little thing that says includes paid promotion. So there's nothing here that's like scary to broadcasters or anything. This is just something that they need to do to comply with FCC guidelines.

[01:28] Once we get down here, we're going to get into some of the kind of more shanky stuff. So you can see they are now basically saying this is what kind of format that is permitted, what kind of advertising that we want to have on the website,

[01:41] and then what's not going to be permitted on the website. And so notably, there is a couple of things down here where, so you can go ahead and play sponsored games, no problem.

[01:54] You can do panels on your channel page. You can showcase products in your stream background, right, all that normal stuff. But now there's a couple of limitations. So limitation number one is the logos on stream are limited to 3% of the screen size.

[02:07] Now, there's a little bit of an error here. So it says on stream brand overlays are limited to 3%, but logos on stream are limited. So I'm not sure if it's logos or brand overlays. Is it not the same thing? I can't be too sure. But regardless, this in and of itself is not like that big of a deal.

[02:22] I saw a lot of people making a huge deal about this, but if we just take a look at an average student's screen, this represents about 3% of the 1080p screen space here. I'll just put this up here so that you can kind of see on this side.

[02:34] This is not too much. It's pretty typical for a logo. I think a lot of people are kind of upset with the idea that Twitch would limit them and tell them what to do. We're going to talk about why they did that in a little bit.

[02:48] And then the big one, this is the massive change, and this is inferred that burned-in video ads are no longer allowed, including burned-in audio. What is a burned-in ad? So if you are watching a streamer and an ad appears, Twitch is giving you that ad.

[03:05] But if the streamer double-clicks a video and they play an ad to you outside of Twitch, that is what a burned-in ad is. So a burn-in ad is something that they are showing to you without Twitch being involved.

[03:20] Twitch is just not involved in that process. Major events do this. Big broadcasters do this. Lots of sponsorships that require streamers to, particularly small streamers, require burn-in video or audio to kind of get around the Twitch system.

[03:35] Twitch is saying that's no longer okay. We don't want burn-in ads. So we're going to talk about the implications of that and who that affects because that is a pretty big change. And then they're also saying, okay, no audio ads and no burned-in display ads.

[03:47] Basically all burned-in ads are not okay. So we'll get into, like, why that's happening and sort of the big stuff around that in a minute. They've also prohibited certain categories. There's not too many changes from the former, like, terms of service stuff here.

[03:59] And, like, mostly it's just, like, hateful products, illegal stuff. I think it's kind of interesting that they eliminated paid political content, which doesn't mean that, like, you can't make this kind of content. It just means that that kind of content can't be paid for.

[04:11] I saw a lot of misunderstandings. People were like, oh, we can't run our charities anymore. Because, like, that's not true. Because that would not typically be considered a paid promotion. There are some places where that is, where, like, there's paid charities.

[04:24] We'll get into that later. But for the most part, this is not really affecting many people. It is interesting that they banned, like, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency schemes. I actually really like this. I think that there was a lot of students that got away with this.

[04:38] Now they're on Kik and they've gone different places. man, so this is actually a good thing that they also, like, kind of got rid of this. Okay, cool. So that's, like, the what. There, and now we're going to get into the why. This is going to be, like, the really big part and, like, the sort of need-to-know stuff around the video,

[04:53] like, why this is happening, why people are upset, and what's going on. And I want to go to, so you saw, like, if you've been following the news on this, like, OTK, which is, like, a really big agency slash, like, content creator team,

[05:07] basically said, yo, we are going to literally walk out. we're going to just leave if this happens. Several people made announcements saying, so like OTK here says on Twitter,

[05:20] they're just like straight up like, yo, we're going to walk if this happens. Asmong Gold had a clip where he said something to that effect as well, which a lot of people here have to at least start looking for a non-exclusive deal on another platform.

[05:35] So people are being very dramatic about this change. A lot of people maybe don't understand that. It really is because of one line that they updated in terms of service. It actually isn't even in this announcement. We're going to look at that line right here, and I will read that line to you here.

[05:48] This is what scared them. We recognize that streamers want to collaborate with brands, but as outlined in the terms of service, we maintain the exclusive, underline, pay real close attention to that, right to sell, serve, and display advertisements on Twitch services.

[06:04] this means that you may not insert, embed, or burn in pre-recorded advertising units into your live stream. So when they updated this, this is what terrified every agency.

[06:16] This is why everybody flipped out. This is why everybody started going crazy. Because it basically means if you are an agency that was working with Twitch, sorry, not working with Twitch, but working with influencers to bring them deals,

[06:28] you no longer have that ability if Twitch says you don't because they maintain the exclusive right to do that. And that is an absolutely crazy thing. So every agency was immediately under threat because they're basically, if you imagine OTK,

[06:41] not only just for the events that they run, but for everything they do, they're basically under threat overnight. Any events that you've seen, like Crater Clash or anything that's run through Ludwig, who occasionally does things before he moves onto YouTube,

[06:53] or any of the people that are doing live events, like Jerma, any of those sponsorships and things like that could be under threat under this. This is an absolutely crazy thing to say and Indeed Twitch did walk this back like a little bit

[07:06] they said okay well our brand and content policy was overly broad this was like a bit of confusion and frustration we apologize for that we didn't intend to limit streamers ability

[07:18] to enter into direct relations with sponsors so they're like kind of walking this back a little but they just basically like where they've left this off is oh hey we'll update the policy to be clearer. And we'll get into, like, what that's... I'm going to tell you, like,

[07:30] everything that's going to happen. And all that stuff. But this is what really scared people, okay? So, you might wonder why. Like, what happened here? Well,

[07:42] like, why? Like, what's happening? Well, Twitch is... I'll post what I wrote here. Twitch is trying to encourage brands to work directly with Twitch.

[07:54] Right? They don't... So imagine a situation like this, okay? You have a brand like G Fuel. They sell energy drinks, okay? Now, G Fuel pays an agency S dollars, let's call it $100,000, okay,

[08:07] to have Y, let's call it 15 influencers, advertise G Fuel. And the agency takes 20% typically of the advertising fee

[08:19] and then pays the influencers, okay? this is very typical. There's tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars of deals running through Twitch like this.

[08:32] Now, Twitch sees zero dollars of this, right? Because this entire deal has been negotiated. This activation has been negotiated and the entire deal has been done outside of Twitch. Twitch literally sees none of this money. The agency found the brand.

[08:44] The agency selects the influencers. All that gets done behind closed doors. Like, bam, the advertisement appears. The influencer does the ad and that's the end of it. Twitch sees nothing of it. So that frustrates Twitch to a great degree.

[08:57] So Twitch is basically saying that Twitch is, I'm going to basically send a, we'll read a paragraph from, let's take a minute to talk about Twitch's new branded content lines.

[09:11] I'll link this. This is from Noah Downs, or my lawyer friend. Very, very good article about this. And I'll just take a link real quick from him reading this, and then we'll kind of explain it.

[09:24] So Twitch is trying to encourage brands to work directly with Twitch. In order to do this, they need to demonstrate to sponsors and advertisers that Twitch has tools and options that content creators do not have, hence why the guidelines take away options that content creators had before.

[09:36] The guidelines take a cornerstone of the content creator economy on Twitch and force sponsors to work with Twitch at the content creator's expense. So they're basically saying, look, nobody can do burn-in ads but us, so if you want to do burn-in ads, if you want to do real ads with us, you've got to go through Twitch.

[09:50] They're basically trying to poach the brand opportunities from the agencies, and they are trying to poach them from big influencers and event creators who are selling these ads right now for their own content.

[10:04] So basically, there's a couple of reasons why. The first reason is they want to gain more control over the event ecosystem and major production so most events get sponsors directly for their shows on Twitch

[10:23] Twitch wants to actually be the agency of record, which means they are the only people that can sell ad deals for that event. So, if we are the agency of record for a particular brand, what that means is that we are the only people that can represent that brand.

[10:35] Now, there is a huge note here, and this is something that no one has talked about, and I will tell you, is that this is not something that is new. Twitch has forced esports organizations to do this in the past.

[10:51] So basically forcing them to accept Twitch as their singular ad agency, and you can check the article by Reuters where ESL and DreamHack signed exclusivity deals with Twitch, basically saying we are the only people that are going to advertise.

[11:04] So basically what happened in 2015 was Twitch controlled the ecosystem for esports. If you remember, basically all esports was done there, and Twitch said, hey, we want to be the only people to sell sponsors for you, and if you want to advertise here as a part of your rights deal to broadcast on our platform,

[11:18] you're going to need to also accept us as AOR. And the esports teams had no opportunity but to comply. So this is a big thing that nobody kind of realizes. So Twitch basically is now doing this, but they're saying, okay,

[11:30] we want this control over events and major production as well. So they are basically saying, we want to be the agency of record. We want to cut all the deals for events. If you want to do an event on Twitch, we're going to sell those deals. We're going to go through.

[11:42] It's an incredibly arrogant and just hubris-filled thing to do, but they basically assume that they can take control of all this. But it gets worse because they're also trying to push talent agencies out. This is why you saw OTK slash Mythic freak out.

[11:55] And basically what's happening here is if you understand this, where Twitch basically sees $0 of all of the money that these talent agencies are doing, then you understand that Twitch is attempting to control the ecosystem

[12:10] by taking the deals from talent agencies and running them through their own sales. Now, this is absolutely stupid for two reasons.

[12:22] The first one is that Twitch's media buy minimum is very high. I believe I can't tell you how high it is, but it is super, super high. Meaning that in order to do any kind of deal

[12:35] where if you want to activate influencers through Twitch, there's a certain minimum you have to pay. That minimum is way higher than the average influencer deal, total deal value at all. So Twitch's assumption that they can take on these deals is super arrogant, especially in the context of number three, which says that Twitch's sales team, and indeed Twitch in general, is unprofitable and bleeding employees as a result of Amazon layoffs.

[13:04] So think about what it takes for a talent agency to do a deal with an influencer. You've got to have deliverables done. You've got to have somebody activate their contracts, talk to the influencer, get the influencer deliverables, organize that between the brand and the influencer.

[13:18] There's a lot of work that talent agencies do. We used to be a talent agency, so I know that there's a lot of work that goes into it. Basically what Twitch is saying is, well, if we push all these agencies out, again, you have to really pay attention to that image I showed you.

[13:32] like we are the exclusive people so if we push everybody else out we are going to be the ones that get all those deals all the brands are going to go to us super dumb right twitch cannot possibly manage the amount of workflow it's going to take to individually do all those deals and that's

[13:47] assuming that the brands can meet their minimums which they actually can't do so super dumb uh another let's talk about thing you're trying to do is push small platforms running burn-ins out

[13:59] and actually the walkback even claims this, I think, when they posted this. They're like, oh, just kidding. We're just actually trying to target the third parties.

[14:13] I think that I could find this somewhere, but that might be the head of monetization that said this in a reply. So let's find that real quick here. Mike Minton. yeah we understand yeah we understand that streamers need to be able to activate their

[14:30] direct sponsorships using brand asset for video audio and display so basically there was a couple of comments that basically said okay well we're trying to like eliminate these small platforms so what are they actually talking about well this is actually really important to small streamers uh there's a lot of websites like this one like getstream.com which basically says hey if you're

[14:47] a small creator sign up for this and we like we'll you play video ads and then we'll pay you for it And small streamers actually monetize really effectively this way. Basically, this gets kind of complicated, but these websites can sell ads more efficiently than Twitch can,

[15:03] and so thus it just literally, they just produce an ad, they give it to any kind of, they blast out the same kind of campaign to like 150, 200 creators, very small creators, so below 100 viewers. And all those creators play their burn in ads,

[15:17] and then they get paid for it directly. So almost like an affiliate marketing deal. under Twitch's policy they would eliminate this process and basically hurting a lot of small streamers that try to make income off of their streams nobody like talks about this

[15:29] because nobody really understands the business side of this like there's a lot of like react and drama stuff not like these people are not like practitioners don't really do these things so nobody really understands like how this actually works but by eliminating these platforms Twitch

[15:41] again forces the major brands to go to them instead of go to these platforms and simultaneously destroy this source of income for small streamers,

[15:53] which they don't care about. They don't care about small creators at all. They are only... And likewise, like, a lot of people are like, oh, this is, like, affecting, like, streamers. Like, the vast majority of streamers, this isn't affecting them at all. It's just to gain control over, like, the ecosystem of events and, like, major productions that are going on on Twitch.

[16:06] They don't care about you as a small streamer at all. They don't care about even mid-sized streamers or anything like that. Like, this is just a... They're dropping a bomb to eliminate these big players, and then the aftermath, the aftershock, of this, like, doesn't matter, right?

[16:22] Like, it hurts small streamers, doesn't matter. Next, we're also, more obviously, trying to control who runs ads on the platform, forcing people through to Twitch sales. Now, again, they cannot handle every deal,

[16:36] so this is super arrogant for them to assume they do. Okay, so let's talk about who it hurts here and, like, who's, like, really affected. the first person that hurts is small streamers because services that do burn-ins or affiliates are no longer possible

[16:51] so removing the ability for creators to offer burned-in ads basically limits on-screen advertising and really drastically hurts the creator economy at that level so small streamers are hurt very bad by this

[17:03] and again, unfortunately those small streamers are basically just an aftershock, afterthought Twitch doesn't care more than anyone else, I think, is for event organizers,

[17:15] so people that are trying to run events through Twitch. The major way that those people... They were already unprofitable. I mean, like, already events were very unprofitable to run. The only way that a lot of those people made money

[17:27] was by selling burdens and by selling direct ads. So now if Twitch wants to take a cut of that or force those people to do minimums, let's say that, like, Twitch's minimum, theoretically, is something like $200,000 or whatever,

[17:39] and they go to an event and say, okay, all sponsors have to pay at least $200,000, you can't get through the door. Well, now, like, every opportunity that they had, and plus Twitch taking a cut of that, right? Like, it also includes charities.

[17:52] So, again, I'm going to paste something from Noah Downs' article, which reads that, I thought I was going to talk about charities. Many charities offer a brand kit to content creators, including graphic packages and polished commercials

[18:04] that help content creators advocate for the charities and encourage donations. Platforms like Tiltify provide on-screen banners and overlay tools. Because many charities offer incentives for fundraising, these charity campaigns are considered branded content.

[18:16] Some charities even have so far to provide FTC disclosure guidance in certain cases for annual events. And I'll also add to this that there are multiple charities that actually just literally pay people to do the charity. So it actually is just branded content. They literally just say, hey, we will give you money in order for you to advertise this charity and to raise money for it, to do a fundraiser and raise money for us.

[18:34] We'll give you $10,000 to do a fundraiser to raise an excellent number of dollars. these new guidelines expressly prohibit content creators making use of these tools and restrict on-stream logos that content creators can utilize.

[18:47] So this basically hits charities, because again, Twitch wants to be these sole people that do that. And then also it hurts co-streaming events and content,

[18:59] because, so let's say, if you ever watch something like Lyric or someone watched an E3 event or something, many of those events have burned in ads that they run so if you're coaching something

[19:11] just under this rule you would also not be able to coach in that event because the which is a huge source of viewership like CoCarnage do this all the time if you ever see someone like advertised under like the special events category actually like as we

[19:23] speak there's a summer game fest going right now where like Lyric right now is actually watching an event and under these new rules so he's like just here just chilling like watching an event and under these new rules like he would

[19:35] not be able to do that. So that's a really big deal, right? Like, we literally see it right now, where he's got like 21,000 viewers watching this Cobra the Thing. So it affects them as well. Oh, okay. So there is a bunch to talk about, about like kind of like what's

[19:49] going on here. And now you kind of understand why and who it hurts. So we're going to get into some of the drama about this, like some of the things that people have said that there is some misunderstanding. And then we're going to go through just kind of an overview of everything that happened. And before we do that, we are 20 minutes in exactly to a Devon

[20:04] national deal. So thank you everybody for coming here and bearing through a true explanation of this topic. If you're still here, leave a comment at the 20 minute mark to say 20 minutes. I'm still here in the comment section because it really means a lot that you take the time to actually

[20:17] learn and be educated on the subject. There's so many people who just read headlines. So you are one of the OGs. Thank you for being here. I really appreciate you. I have two things. So one is I've rebranded my Discord server and it now a sort of like focus on business gaming and media discussions So go check that out It got about 10 active users right now and there a bunch of discussions going on with stuff like this We covered this whole event before I even made this video You would have known everything if you went there

[20:41] That is discord.gg slash Devin, or check the link down below. And secondly, you can go to patreon.com slash Devin Nash. If you really like these videos and what I do, patreon.com slash Devin Nash. Just throw me five bucks.

[20:53] You get over 90 videos teaching business, marketing, and a lot of the concepts that I use to build a seven-figure business. again it's just five dollars because I don't need your money it was meant to replace Twitch subscriptions five bucks gets you through gets you every video go check it out patreon.com

[21:06] thank you guys now we're going to get into some of the um other this thing so I let's do some um bonus rounds okay bonus round number one is is why the hell does Twitch keep making mistakes

[21:19] okay like what is going on how could a company possibly be this bad like why are they trying to control this. Well, the first thing to understand is, like, the people that knew

[21:31] what they were doing and built the website, okay, those people left when four years after Amazon acquired Twitch. So these are your foundational building block people, like this

[21:48] former COO Kevin Lin, right, the head of partnerships, John, a lot of the people that, like, really built Twitch up from the fundamental core and knew what they were doing, knew how to build communities.

[22:00] Now, there were still some good people left at Twitch over this period of time after the Amazon acquisition. Basically, what happens is, like, when you sell a company, which is a process called

[22:12] M&A, Emerging Acquisition, that company wants to incentivize people to stay on for as long as possible, and they will give you what's called RSUs, or stock units, in Amazon in this case, and those will typically have two, three, or four-year time horizons.

[22:27] In Twitch's case, most of these executives had two to four-year time horizons. So two years, a lot of executives left, four years, basically every executive left. And now at this point, the new team brought in by Amazon has to kind of figure out what

[22:39] to do, right? They've got to figure out, but it's worse than that because Amazon is a ruthless company for profitability. It was under Jeff Bezos. It is under Andy Jassy.

[22:51] If you don't make money as a subsidiary of Amazon, you get put on ice. You are opposed. So the people that are at Twitch really have to figure out how to make Twitch profitable. And that is why every change that you've seen to Twitch

[23:03] has been ad-focused or monetization-focused because they have to. I mean, like, at the same time as Amazon is cutting their staff because they're not making profit, the people that are remaining there have the key performance indicators

[23:16] exclusively of trying to make as much money as possible. Further, though, the people that knew how to build a community peaced out with their money. Fine, right to them.

[23:28] Like, the people that were the former executives of Twitch, they left and they had their money. They put in their time, okay? Like, it's not a bad thing. Like, they built what they built and they sold the company and then they stayed on additional years to try to train people and then they did what they could do.

[23:40] But no one could really replace those people in an endemic ecosystem like Twitch when live streaming is such a culture, it's such a feeling of how to run a club, there's so few people that can run something like Twitch at an executive level.

[23:52] But now it's run by ghost crews who don't know what they're doing, and the people that actually are left there that can make a difference just don't have enough of a voice, because there are some really good people that are left there.

[24:04] So, unfortunately, we're left with this situation where Twitch has nowhere to go. They have to take control of as much of the advertising deal as possible.

[24:18] They have to take control of these event organizers, and there's really no way through that. So Twitch did walk back these branded guidelines, and there's going to be a couple of things that just frustrate me about things like this,

[24:30] especially when these sort of big influencers reply. I'm getting more and more annoyed with this, actually. These people that upload these videos within a couple of hours of this happening and just clearly do not know what they're talking about. They don't work in this industry.

[24:42] I mean, people that are influencers, just because they run a Twitch stream does not give them carte blanche to give you information on these topics. They are not actually running these deals. They're not actually, like, in the business. So I'm getting more and more annoyed at these people, and I'm just going to kind of clarify a couple of things, right?

[24:56] The first thing is, like, there's no universe, okay, where Twitch tells you you can't sell your own sponsorships. That will never happen on this platform, okay?

[25:08] They would be crazy to do this. They would immediately lose every one of their broadcasts. and this announcement never said anything to that point. To be clear again, the thing that scared people, especially agencies, rightfully so, was Twitch said, we are the only ones that can maintain this exclusivity.

[25:20] So all the big streamers and all the big people are really freaking out, not about their own streams or about Twitch in general. They're just blowing up because if these events don't have the burning ads and don't have the advertising units and Twitch is controlling that,

[25:33] these events are basically not possible to run. I'm not saying that's not warranted. It's good that they freaked out about this, But, like, they made it seem like every creator at, like, every size is going to lose their ability to do sponsors, and that's just, like, not actually true.

[25:46] Secondly, like, okay, there's absolutely no universe where Twitch individually enforces or tells you the size of your logos, except for the biggest events on the platform.

[25:59] So that's going to get walked back. The 3% thing, like, again, like, just doesn't matter. It's just dumb for Twitch to, like, say that. There's just really out-of-touch people that are writing these articles and things like that. But this individually, like, let's take, like, a 1.5 health.

[26:13] Let's take a 5,000 CCU person who has a, do you honestly think that, like, Twitch has the staff to enforce a, oh, this overlay is 6% or 9% or 15% versus, like, 3%?

[26:26] There's no, there's absolutely no way. People think of Twitch as, like, the god police. This is something that comes in with, like, simulcasting as well, which we'll talk about in a minute. is, like, there's so many people that message me, and they're like, oh, I would never multistream

[26:38] on Twitch, because what if Twitch, like, Twitch will know, and they'll know I'm streaming to Kik, and they'll know I'm streaming to YouTube at the same time. Bro, like, if you're below 5,000 CCU, there's no one even working there, man. Like, they're not going to actually

[26:50] know that you're multistreaming. Even if they do, they'll send you a warning to say, oh, okay, whoops, didn't know, sorry about that, and then just, like, go on with your business, right? Like, Twitch doesn't care about you. They don't have enough people to care about you. They're so messed up with their own, like, stuff that you can just run this stuff,

[27:05] and most likely even most of these events could get away with this, so they would never, they would never know. So there's no universe where this actually happens. And their wording is just messed up. Now, there's some other stuff going on. We're going to do some other,

[27:17] like, bonus, bonus round stuff. Bonus, bonus round number two is that Twitch simultaneously in the same day walked back exclusivity, walked forward, let's say, exclusivity, otherwise

[27:31] known as simulcasting, so they updated their terms of service very quietly here in Legal Terms of Service section 11, and I will read this to you. When you are streaming live on Twitch services, you may not simultaneously livestream or broadcast

[27:45] on any other Twitch-like service, meaning any web-based network platform or service that supports livestreaming. This section does not apply to non-profit or government entities. I'm going to try really hard to remain calm here.

[27:58] This is an absolute... This is so bad. The fact that Twitch is so arrogant to assume that they can require...

[28:11] So previously this was only for partners and affiliate contracts. They're now trying to tell everyone that if you stream on Twitch, you can't stream anywhere else. I would love to see this challenged in court. you're like you're not an employee what you're basically saying oh you have to be exclusive to

[28:25] our service and again like it's like oh or we'll ban you but this is such just this is dog shit business practice this is the reason I boycotted twitch and I ended my stream even though it was making over a hundred thousand dollars a year I said I'm I'm totally over this and I made a tweet

[28:39] about this right I mean I said I'm gonna make this video because I got so many asks to make this video so many people were like yo make a video about this make a video about this and I said in my Twitter, right, I said, look, I'll stop playing Diablo, I'll make a video about

[28:52] Twitch brand changes, but I don't care, because I moved 95% of my business to other platforms over 21 to 22, and I warned, when I warned all you about this in the first place, for context, Novo was 90% Twitch revenue focused in 2021, we're less than 5% now, but we're

[29:05] 5x that in revenue, and I wrote, I don't understand how much writing needs to be on the wall for creators and companies who are really Twitching it, and I don't, I just, I don't get it, like, when will you understand that this platform is dog shit, and like, that they are predatory,

[29:17] and that they are attacking people and their livelihoods. They don't care about you. At some point, you have to put your foot down. This happens to be in eSports. It just blows my mind how many people just don't do this. You just don't take a stand against anything.

[29:29] It doesn't matter what your income is. It doesn't matter, like, if you don't believe in something, then, like, vote with your feet and get the fuck out. Like, it was not beneficial for me to end my Twitch stream when I did. I had 3,000 concurrent viewers every day, and I was crushing it.

[29:41] But I was like, this is wrong. Like, what they're doing is wrong. Like, this stuff around all this is wrong. I'm out. And you can still go to my Twitch stream. like twitch.tv slash Devin Adams, if I haven't, like, brought up, at this point, I doubt I'll ever start it again, but you can go see, like, what the title of that page is, right, and it says, like, hey, I'm off of Twitch,

[29:57] I'm boycotting Twitch, like, I'm out, and I moved to YouTube, and it's the best decision I've ever made, right, and I simultaneously, I made my vote, I said, with my actions, I went to my business, I said, look, we are hugely Twitch-focused, this platform has no future, we're going to move out,

[30:09] and I told everybody on YouTube that I was doing this, and then, bam, here we are today. All these broadcasters being, like, oh, like, I'm losing money, I'm, like, doing, like, dude, to some extent, when are you going to be like, oh, I'll just stream on YouTube.

[30:22] I'll change my business over. I'll take the hit. People are so scared. Twitch has never been doing you any favors and they're not even providing any discovery for you. This simulcasting change is just so insulting. Twitch is literally so arrogant to say that a new person going on the website

[30:36] that might want to try to grow their brand on a place like Kik or on a place like YouTube or wherever else is not allowed to do that because why? what do you you literally haven't paid me anything I a brand new user on the Twitch service so you just saying oh this is just a rule we have and if not we ban you Fuck off Like it such a stupid thing And to imply that Twitch has the enforcement protocol to be able to actually do this at any real level

[31:02] man, I was, like, kind of screwed around this issue. I'll just tell you outright, if you're a small streamer, affiliate, or whatever, just fucking break the rules. Just, like, just multi-stream. On the literal 0, 0, 0, 0, 1% cosmic chance that somebody calls you on it,

[31:14] just be like, I didn't understand. I didn't know. I've never watched a DevNash video in my life, whatever. Like, don't allow, like, don't, if you are going to stay on this stupid platform, then at the very least what you should do is you should protest and break the rules.

[31:26] Because this is so dumb. It's super unfair. It's anti, it's completely predatory. It's anti-consumer interest. It's everything under the sun. It's just sad. It's sad and pathetic that they do this. They're clearly trying to grasp, like, what remains of their market share as platforms encroach upon it.

[31:43] And it's just a joke. So the simulcasting bonus round thing. I'll talk about another thing that a couple of people asked me to talk about, which is the bonus bonus thing. Bonus bonus bonus. We just are rolling through it.

[31:55] And that's that Twitch is, I guess, apparently just, like, literally mugging people. So they have a clause in their affiliate contract which says, if you or we terminate this agreement, a maintenance fee will be deducted from your remaining balance. The maintenance fee will be lesser of the accrued program fees for a Twitch channel or $25.

[32:10] Any remaining balance after the deduction or maintenance fee will be paid to you. Okay, so they're basically saying, if you choose to end this agreement with us, you owe us $25, and if there's money that we owe you, we'll take that first.

[32:23] And this is actually something that people are treating like a new thing, but it wasn't. That's an error. This has been in the affiliate contract for a long time. People are just really upset about Twitch right now.

[32:36] I'm trying to find the link, the source of this. but there's a web archive that you can go to where you can just see this. Oh, here it is. Yeah, so in 2021, you'll see the date here on webarchive.org.

[32:50] You'll just see that this affiliate contract, you can go check it out, had this exact same clause in it. So this is not something that is new. They didn't just, like, just update this. Here it is. The maintenance fee will be the lesser of accrued programs that you're going to get,

[33:02] or $25. So 2021. So don't make the mistake. A lot of people say this is new, but it's not. It's been there forever. Also, a lot of other platforms have that same kind of rule. So I think it's just, again, it's just poor taste.

[33:16] There's nothing else really to say about it. Most of the affiliate people are people that probably need that $25 a lot more than partners and, like, the fact that they'd want to cancel and take, like, $25 for maintenance fee.

[33:30] It's just, like, more predatory bullshit. So where does that leave us where we're at? I think you probably completely understand what's going on now, and you kind of understand why. The big takeaways from this video to understand are that this is a push to try to control advertising for events, major productions,

[33:49] and to push small platforms and people that are running these burn-in ads out. I don't ever really think that Twitch was going to go after the talent agencies. The talent agencies have a lot of power, and nowadays a lot of the talent agencies like Mythic are kind of baked in to the influencers,

[34:04] like the influences themselves have some equity in it. Like, um, Voice Critical's talent agency, uh, Human Talent, and I believe, um, Mythic and OTK themselves have, like, creator equity, so a lot of these

[34:16] really big creators, like, kind of own a piece of these talent agencies. It's really dangerous to go after those talent agencies. There's no real benefit to Twitch, unless they're actually internally so arrogant that they think that they can take on all the TA's deals. Okay? Then, like, yeah, go after them. Um,

[34:29] I'd just be shocked if they really were intended to do that. Again, this I think was just poor wording, and they don't really intend to do that. I do think they'll walk back to the talent agency thing, but I do 100% believe that this change to branded content was intended to go after the events

[34:44] and go after the small platforms where they stand to make a lot of money trying to convert those brands over to Twitch themselves. I could talk a lot about why I just don't think that advertising through Twitch for most brands is smart,

[35:01] and I don't think that they were going to be able to control these deals to get those deals anyway. I think most of the really large, there's not that many brands that can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for an initial exploratory campaign.

[35:13] We're talking like Fortune 500s and people with big marketing budgets. And the ones that will kind of have a lot of those ad agencies, a lot of the ad agencies, Twitch isn't a new thing anymore. Like maybe five, seven years ago,

[35:27] there would be like some Madison Avenue agencies, brand agencies, that were like, hey, let's put an exploratory budget towards Twitch, throw a million dollars towards it, see what happens. They didn't get good results. They're all burned out. And no one is really looking at Twitch these days as the place to advertise for anything.

[35:41] Performance marketing where you can convert products, just do PPC. Just advertise through Google or advertise through Facebook. You'll be way more effective. Your target is way better. And then for exposure marketing, maybe for games. It's fine, and that's why you still see a lot of games advertising on Twitch.

[35:54] The vast majority of products just do it better on YouTube. So a lot of those people that are in the advertising agency world, we're not stupid. I spend every day of my life trying to understand the best way to allocate resources for brands.

[36:08] So if a brand gives me $100,000, my job is to try to figure out how to get that $100,000 converted the best way possible to get their results. And 99% of the time, it's not going to come out with Twitch. And we're agnostic, right?

[36:20] Marketers don't care. I'm not religious about it. Whether I like YouTube more or I like Twitch more, If Twitch was the best converting platform and I hated them, I would still put brand dollars there because I just work for my brands, right? But that's not the case. We are not dumb.

[36:32] We know at this point that a lot of the money that we spend on Twitch just basically gets vacuumed up and goes nowhere. It gets eaten up by huge amounts of percentages from talent agencies that take 30, 40% of deals predatorily. And for that matter, once it actually hits the influencer, you get some guy that's playing a video game and he's like, oh, yeah, I'm sponsored by Rage Shadow Legends.

[36:52] You guys should check it out. Like, it's just some dumb CTA or the influencer doesn't care. So why would I do that when I can go to, like, way more motivated people on Instagram or YouTube who actually, like, are about the hustle and trying to do this full-time and are, like, really motivated? There's some exceptions to that with, like, small to mid-sized creators on Twitch

[37:06] that I've found to be much more motivated than large-sized creators. But generally speaking, just, like, ad dollars being spent on Twitch just isn't worth it. So you're not going to see this, like, exodus of people. Twitch is, like, so crazy the way they view this.

[37:19] I'd love to get in front of some of the salespeople and try to figure out, like, what they're thinking here about how they can get these brand deals from people like us, the people that control the budgets. Because they must be thinking, like, wow, if we push out all the talent agencies and we push out all the events people, then the brands have nowhere to go but us.

[37:33] And the brands will come in and they'll be like, please, can we advertise on Twitch your great service where it's so amazing, your ad dollars, your ROAS, your return on advertising spend is so amazing, your ROI is so great. We can't wait to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars with you.

[37:46] Now that we don't work with Ludwig, now that we don't work with OTK, Now that we don't work with these people, we'll come and we'll try to get these advertising dollars from you. It's never going to happen, dude. Like, these brands already are burned out from Twitch and already had terrible bad experiences.

[38:01] Hell, dude, I was working with a brand that was willing to spend $10 million on Twitch, and they couldn't even get a salesperson to respond to their emails. They tried for four months. They tried for four months. I was working with this brand as a director. It was trying to put $10 million in Twitch.

[38:14] Four months, the sales team didn't even bother to get back to this guy. And you're telling me that these are the people that can onboard, like, all these deals once they push all the rest of the agencies out?

[38:26] I don't know. I don't know what else I got to do. If you notice, my YouTube channel is just so much less Twitch stuff because I don't care. Like, I already, you go back three years, four years, five years, I made the videos that said this was going to happen.

[38:40] I'm literally point for point. I haven't missed a single beat on it because I'm in this. It's not because I'm smart or some genius or whatever. It's just because I do this every day, and I'm in the business of it. And, like, I don't know what it's going to take at some point for streamers to vote with their feet.

[38:54] Like, I just feel bad for you guys because you're literally, like, in an abusive relationship. Like, I don't know how else to say it. Like, you're just, you're with a company that doesn't care about you, that is just repeatedly over and over making decisions that are not in your best interest

[39:06] and are not creator-focused. And you have so many opportunities to go other places, like YouTube, which has repeatedly made decisions in creator interest, or even Kik, which is like offering 90% to people that go there and literally offering to pay for people's affiliate contracts if they cancel.

[39:20] Now, there's a lot of problems with Kik. You can watch my video about it. And I don't know if Kik is like the place to be. But just case in point, like there are other places to build a brand, right? Like we don't have to keep doing this, right? You guys can vote with your feet. I hope you do.

[39:32] Anyway, I guess I was a little bit bitter in this video because I'm just kind of tired of it all. I'm going on Twitter spaces to have the same conversation like an hour. and I just don't know what else it's going to take.

[39:44] We're just going to be seeing more. This is not the last video I'm going to make about dumb stuff that Twitch is doing. You know, I wrote in my tweet that like a leopard never changes its spots and I think that's true. I think that the amount,

[39:57] the only way for Twitch to like really change its direction is like, and I said this before, is like a visionary executive, like someone that is willing to fire a huge amount of the people at Twitch,

[40:09] reduce the staff, run super lean, and completely understand and change the culture back to being creator-focused first. And also, more importantly, and probably most importantly, is going to be able to convince Amazon that Twitch is going to have to take even more of a loss

[40:24] by lowering the amounts of splits and the cuts that they take to be able to onboard creators that they're bleeding from the platform. This is just not a realistic future, and I just think you should plan. I believe in your best interest, but I want for you most of all,

[40:39] if you're a content creator listening to this, I know many of you are, is to make the proper decisions to enable your dream to be possible. I don't think that those decisions and that dream is possible on Twitch anymore. I don't think it's been possible for a long time.

[40:51] And I think the sooner you come to terms with that, the sooner you'll be more successful, which is all I really want to hear. To everybody else that's listening, yeah, I don't know. I hope that you totally understand this issue at this point and that this video has been sort of a full stop to that.

[41:04] Thank you, everybody, for taking a listen, for bearing with me through this entire thing. I'll see you for the next one.