• Twitch is making adjustments to the earnings from Prime subscriptions.
• Instead of receiving a minimum of 50 percent of the value of a subscription from Prime, streamers will take home a fixed rate determined by the country the subscriber is from.
• Twitch’s Partner Plus Program is also receiving some changes.

Earlier this month, chief executive officer at Twitch, Dan Clancy revealed that despite being the destination for live gaming and other live content, Twitch wasn’t profitable.

While Twitch attracts millions of viewers on any given day, it turns that running a platform that serves up high quality live content, is rather expensive.

With this ailing profitability in mind, Twitch has announced changes to the payouts received from Amazon Prime members. Prime members receive a free token every month that can be used to subscribe to a creator, unlocking perks such as custom emotes and potentially more.

It used to be the case that a Prime subscription was worth the same amount of money as a regular subscription but that’s now changing according to Clancy.

“To continue offering the benefit in a sustainable way, we are transitioning to a fixed rate model for Prime Gaming subs based upon the country of the subscriber,” the CEO explained.

While Clancy says that the payout streamers will receive is less than a five percent difference “in the majority of countries” in others it’s far lower. For example, in South Africa if you received a Prime subscription for a South African you would recieve half of the $4.99 a subscription costs or $2.49 (~R47.07). Now if you receive a Prime subscription from a South African you will receive just $0.65 (~R12.29). That’s a difference of R34.78, or a 73 percent drop in earnings from Prime subscriptions.

While we suppose something is better than nothing, especially when it comes to Prime subscriptions, that is a massive difference in earnings. Note that earnings from Prime subscribers based in other regions may be higher.

You can find all the fixed rates for Prime gaming subs at this URL. These changes will come into effect on 3rd June.

Expanding the Partner Program

In slightly better news, Twitch is expanding its Partner Plus Program.

This program is meant to act as an incentive where, upon reaching a high enough level, streamers can earn more money from subscriptions.

There will now be two addtional levels for streamers to reach and earn more money.

After maintaining 100 Plus Point (earned by getting subscriptions) a streamer will be upgraded to Partner Plus Level 1 where the revenue split from subscriptions is 60/40, 60 percent for the streamer, 40 percent for Twitch. At Level 2, a streamer can enjoy a 70/30 revenue split so long as they maintain 300 Plus Points for three months.

For Level 2 this is a reduction from the 350 points required right now.

This change will come into effect on 1st May.

Starting now, however, streamers who have a 70/30 split won’t switch back to a 50/50 split after earning $100 000.

“We are removing the US$100K cap on net revenue at the 70/30 revenue share level for all streamers, including those in the Partner Plus Program, effective immediately. Previously, after reaching $100K annually in net subscription revenue, the revenue share would revert from 70% to the standard rate of 50%. We have received clear feedback that the $100K cap limited the earnings and growth opportunities for impacted streamers and served as a disincentive. This change is effective starting today,” Clancy reported.

The CEO says that these changes are designed to create a transparent framework so that streamers can more accurately predict their revenue for a given month.

“Twitch’s long-term success depends upon our ability to help these creators sustain their careers over time. At the same time, since our creators depend upon Twitch, we need to ensure that our revenue share structure is designed so that we can sustain the business and Twitch will be here 50 years from now,” Clancy added.