Twitch today announced new metrics related to the growth of its game streaming service, including, most notably, that the number video creator Partners who profit from their Twitch content has climbed to 27,000 over the course of 2017, and the number of Affiliate streamers reached 150,000.
Until mid-2017, Twitch had only allowed a smaller subset of its creator community to make money from their videos after achieving “Partner” status. As of last April, there were 17,000 Partners on Twitch, out of a total of 2.2 million unique monthly broadcasters.
Now, there are 27,000 Partners out of roughly the same number of monthly streamers.
Twitch today puts the monthly streamers figure at “2 million plus” – possibly because it’s waiting to hit the next milestone before announcing a more specific number.
However, that could also be an indication that the creator community itself hasn’t grown that much over the past year, even though the number of people who make money from Twitch has.
The arrival of YouTube Gaming may have something to do with that, if so. An independent report released last month found that YouTube Gaming had grown its streamer base by 343 percent in 2017, while Twitch grew 197 percent.
Still, it’s notable to see the number of Partnered streamers climb by another 10,000 in less than a year.
Twitch requires creators to have a high number of concurrent viewers over a period of time in order to enter these exclusive ranks; it’s not an easy goal to reach. That points to a highly-engaged audience of viewers on the site, tuning into to watch these gameplay videos.
Last spring, Twitch made it easier for regular streamers with smaller channels to make money, too, with the launch of the Twitch Affiliate Program. Twitch Affiliates are able to generate revenue from their videos through things like cheering, subscriptions, and game sales, after hitting a much lower bar in terms of eligibility criteria.
At launch, Twitch invited tens of thousands of non-Partnered channels to participate in the new program. By October – only six months after going live – the Twitch Affiliate Program had grown to include over 110,000 video creators. Today that number is 150,000.
Twitch won’t say how much Partners and Affiliates are earning, nor will it disclose its own revenue. But the company did note that 223 percent more creators are now earning money from their video content on Twitch, compared with last year.
Meanwhile, daily visitors to Twitch has grown to over 15 million, and the site now hosts over 124 million clips, the report says.
In addition, over 1,700 developers have registered to create extensions – the add-ons that allow gamers customize their channels, introduced last August.
The company typically releases its year-end data in some sort of fun, interactive format. Last year, it was a video game. This time around, it’s a digital comic – a change the company says it meant to showcase the creative side of its community, given its expansions in to vlogging and creative content over the past couple of years.
The year-end “report” delves into a few other milestones around content, games, emotes and more, and is available on Twitch’s site here.
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