Twitch still does but the problem with twitch has always been discoverability. Previously, if you wanted to have an audience on twitch as a new streamer, one of the things you did was have a YouTube channel and grow that then convert your audience over to your twitch stream. Lots of streamers have had audiences on YouTube first before moving over to streaming on twitch.
Once TikTok really took off, you began to see twitch streamers pushing their TikTok a lot more and using that as a way to grow their community on twitch.
The problem now is that both YouTube and TikTok have significant streaming platforms. That means someone with a strong YouTube presence can just skip converting users to twitch as that is already hard enough and just stay on the YouTube platform.
My guess is that this is an effort to stymie that “leak” of twitch streamers that decide to stay on the platform where they’re seeing their biggest growth.
Definitely 100% not true. Discoverability on twitch used to be who has the higher viewer count until they added sorting by “recommended” which is still lacking. Nowadays you still supplement your twitch growth with YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
Purely from a user perspective it’s even worse now that every stream gets an ad before you can watch any of the content.
And purely from a user perspective it’s even worse because you have to go by game category then scroll through however many pages of channels there are in the category you’re interested in.
They did just add stories as a feature which might help if it’s implemented correctly.
There are a number of things I like about twitch. Top is searching by games. On YouTube I'm lucky if my results are related streams at all, where on twitch, it is 100% the game I wanted ranked high to low.
I also Like the raid mechanic for finding new streamers. Last, I like the twitch community where I find streamers because they are hanging out in other stream chats-something I have never seen on YouTube
Oh did you mean purely for finding livestreams? I think that’s where the disconnect is. Yeah if you’re just looking for livestreams to watch it’s way different because YouTube has always been really exceptionally bad for that. Content creators bank on getting a video or short recommend where they mention their stream.
I do agree on the twitch raid system too. It’s especially useful for smaller communities that tend to support each other and have relatively similar content.
Once TikTok really took off, you began to see twitch streamers pushing their TikTok a lot more and using that as a way to grow their community on twitch.
The problem now is that both YouTube and TikTok have significant streaming platforms. That means someone with a strong YouTube presence can just skip converting users to twitch as that is already hard enough and just stay on the YouTube platform.
My guess is that this is an effort to stymie that “leak” of twitch streamers that decide to stay on the platform where they’re seeing their biggest growth.