Competition drives the gaming industry, and exclusivity helps companies bring in audience members and keep them around. Much like the recent acquisition of Activision-Blizzard by Microsoft followed bySony’s acquisition of Bungie, the biggest streamers often sign exclusivity contracts withTwitch, YouTube, and Facebook to bring in their massive viewer bases, and notable content creators like Ludwig have made the move to YouTube, keeping the Google-owned streaming service in the race againstTwitch.
For years, Pokimane has been best-known as one of Twitch’s top female streamers (often going up against Amouranth), but she’s just announced that her two-year contract with the site has come to an end. This follows a pattern of her OfflineTV colleague and friend Disguised Toast, wholeft Facebook Gaming for Twitchafter his own recent contract ending. Toast had teased his new contract ahead of its announcement, and likewise, Pokimane says that the “next chapter” will be revealed on February 8, hinting that she’s likely leaving Twitch rather than re-signing the contract. After all, she’s called it the “next chapter,” but this would actively continue to push YouTube against Twitch in the fight for the biggest audience.
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Twitch Is Possibly Losing Pokimane
It’s highly likely that Pokimane is following Ludwig,TimTheTatman, and Dr Disrespect in their move to YouTube, if she is in fact leaving the Amazon-owned streaming platform. However, while many complain about Twitch taking a whopping 50 percent of the profits from its content creators, YouTube takes an even bigger cut. Still, should Pokimane be leaving Twitch, whatever site she’ll be primarily streaming at has probably offered her a large sum of money to do so. So while Twitch may currently have a substantially bigger daily viewership than YouTube does, Pokimane could very well continue a trend in change.
Currently, it’s unclear why Pokimane would want to stop streaming on Twitch, though she will likely explain whatever announcement is coming in the future. Her reasoning could be similar toLudwig’s, who stated that he felt like YouTube cared more about him, especially during the contract negotiations. He said Twitch did little to acknowledge him during this process but felt more confident that YouTube would put more of an effort into their professional relationship. The Doc, as well, received little to no acknowledgment from Twitch when he was infamously and mysteriously banned from the platform out of nowhere.
Twitch is also a hotspot for controversies, especially when it comes to women and minorities. Both viewers and content creators have argued that, especially in the wake of outlandish waves of hate raids, the platform did little to protect POC, women, and the other disparaged groups often made targets. At least in Pokimane’s case when it came to JiDion’s hate raid, Twitch rightfully responded bypermanently banning JiDionfor sending targeted harassment her way. Twitch either had Pokimane’s back or wanted to send a message about targeted harassment on its site, but perhaps Pokimane has both personal and professional reasons why she’d be a better fit or more comfortable elsewhere.
IfPokimane does leave Twitch, the platform will be losing one of the only two leading streamers that are also women, currently ranking ninth in terms of followers after a list of men. Though it may not be Twitch’s decisions where its streamers decide to go off to, having an active hand in offers paired with an already male-dominated streamer base wouldn’t send a positive message about its values.
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