Yesterday, streamers across Twitch initiated a day off as a way to demand better action from the company on hate raids. Now, the data is in, and according to analytics, Twitch did see a drop in traffic compared to the days leading up to the boycott.
According to analytics firm Gamesight, both the number of channels that were streaming and viewers during noon pacific was lower than the eight days preceding the September 1 #ADayOffTwitch boycott.
Check out the grid below with red lines indicating viewers and the blue lines indicating active channels.
In terms of numbers, around 14,000 fewer Twitch channels were streaming between August 31 and September 1, and about a million fewer hours of content were viewed compared to the previous week.
Analyst Zach Bussey added additional context to these figures but found that ultimately [HASH=5014]#ADayOffTwitch[/HASH] did impact overall viewership on the platform. Bussey factored in non-boycott-related causes to a potential viewership decrease including the loss of DrLupo and TimTheTatman, who both recently announced an exclusive switch to YouTube.
Bussey also accounted for the “Back to School” factor now that students are returning to in-person learning.
But even with both of those additional contexts, Bussey found that on September 1, Twitch saw anywhere as low as a 5% to 15% drop in viewership, regardless of Twitch’s extraneous factors.
Streamers are making it clear that a lack of tools to combat hate raids is detrimental to their futures on the platform, particularly marginalized streamers. So far, Twitch has made public announcements about incoming tools like channel-level ban evasion detection and other account improvements, but critics say these changes are not happening soon enough.
Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.
Continue reading...
According to analytics firm Gamesight, both the number of channels that were streaming and viewers during noon pacific was lower than the eight days preceding the September 1 #ADayOffTwitch boycott.
Check out the grid below with red lines indicating viewers and the blue lines indicating active channels.
In terms of numbers, around 14,000 fewer Twitch channels were streaming between August 31 and September 1, and about a million fewer hours of content were viewed compared to the previous week.
Analyst Zach Bussey added additional context to these figures but found that ultimately [HASH=5014]#ADayOffTwitch[/HASH] did impact overall viewership on the platform. Bussey factored in non-boycott-related causes to a potential viewership decrease including the loss of DrLupo and TimTheTatman, who both recently announced an exclusive switch to YouTube.
Bussey also accounted for the “Back to School” factor now that students are returning to in-person learning.
But even with both of those additional contexts, Bussey found that on September 1, Twitch saw anywhere as low as a 5% to 15% drop in viewership, regardless of Twitch’s extraneous factors.
Streamers are making it clear that a lack of tools to combat hate raids is detrimental to their futures on the platform, particularly marginalized streamers. So far, Twitch has made public announcements about incoming tools like channel-level ban evasion detection and other account improvements, but critics say these changes are not happening soon enough.
Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.
Continue reading...