52 Facts About Twitch Interactive

Twitch Interactive is an American video live streaming service that focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of esports competitions, in addition to offering music broadcasts, creative content, and "in real life" streams.

Twitch Interactive acquired Curse in 2016, an operator of online video gaming communities and introduced means to purchase games through links on streams along with a program allowing streamers to receive commissions on the sales of games that they play.

In 2017, Twitch Interactive remained the leading live streaming video service for video games in the US, and had an advantage over YouTube Gaming, which shut down its standalone app in May 2019.

Since then, Twitch Interactive has attracted more than 35 million unique visitors a month.

Twitch Interactive had about 80 employees in June 2013, which increased to 100 by December 2013.

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Also in order to address these problems, Twitch Interactive implemented a new video system shown to be more efficient than the previous system.

Twitch Interactive staff said that the increased delay was likely temporary and at the time, was an acceptable tradeoff for the decrease in buffering.

That same month, a stream known as Twitch Interactive Plays Pokemon, a crowdsourced attempt to play Pokemon Red using a system translating chat commands into game controls, went viral.

The purchase of Twitch Interactive marked the third recent video gaming–oriented acquisition by Amazon, which had previously acquired the developers Reflexive Entertainment and Double Helix Games.

In March 2015, Twitch Interactive reset all user passwords and disabled all connections to external Twitter and YouTube accounts after the service reported that someone had gained "unauthorised access" to the user information of some Twitch Interactive users.

In June 2016, Twitch Interactive added a new feature known as "Cheering", a special form of emoticon purchased as a microtransaction using an in-site currency known as "Bits".

In February 2017, Twitch Interactive announced the Twitch Interactive Game Store, a digital distribution platform that would expose digital purchases of games within the site's browsing interface.

In October 2018, Twitch Interactive announced Amazon Blacksmith, a new extension allowing broadcasters to configure displays of products associated with their streams with Amazon affiliate links.

Twitch Interactive acquired the Internet Games Database, a user-driven website similar in functionality to Internet Movie Database to catalog details of video games in September 2019.

Twitch Interactive began signing exclusivity deals with high-profile streamers in December 2019.

Twitch Interactive introduced a Safety Advisory Council in May 2020, made up from streamers, academics, and think tanks, with a goal to develop guidelines for moderation, work-life balance, and safeguarding the interests of marginalized communities for the platform.

Twitch Interactive verified they had suffered a data leak which they attributed to a server misconfiguration used by a "malicious third party".

Twitch Interactive is designed to be a platform for content, including esports tournaments, personal streams of individual players, and gaming-related talk shows.

In January 2015, Twitch Interactive introduced an official category for music streams, such as radio shows and music production activities, and in March 2015, announced that it would become the new official live streaming partner of the Ultra Music Festival, an electronic music festival in Miami.

In July 2016, Twitch Interactive launched "Social eating" as a beta; it was inspired by the Korean phenomenon of mukbang and Korean players having engaged in the practice as intermissions on their gaming streams.

In March 2017, Twitch Interactive added an "IRL" category, which is designed for content within Twitch Interactive guidelines that does not fall within any of the other established categories on the site .

Twitch Interactive is often used for video game tutorials; the nature of Twitch Interactive allows mass numbers of learners to interact with each other and the instructor in real time.

Twitch Interactive is used for software development learning, with communities of users streaming programming projects and talking through their work.

The biggest charity event of Twitch Interactive is Zevent, a French project created by Adrien Nougaret and Alexandre Douchary, with more than US$10 million raised for Action Contre la Faim in October 2021.

Twitch Interactive has been the official broadcaster of the League of Legends World Championship since 2012, as well as other League of Legends tournaments organized by Riot Games.

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Twitch Interactive reached a deal in 2018 to be the streaming partner of the Overwatch League, with the site offering an "All-Access Pass" with exclusive content, emotes, and in-game items for Overwatch.

Many drivers had their personal live streams on Twitch Interactive, as was the case of several eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series and INDYCAR iRacing Challenge drivers.

In December 2017, the National Basketball Association announced that it would stream NBA G League games on Twitch starting on December 15; the broadcasts include interactive statistics overlays, as well as additional streams of the games with commentary by Twitch personalities.

Twitch Interactive partnered broadcasters unlock more "emote slots" as they gain more subscribers up to a maximum of 50 emotes per channel.

Twitch Interactive said it will work with the community for a suitable replacement for the emoticon.

Twitch Interactive later announced that there would be a new PogChamp emote every 24 hours.

Twitch Interactive began signing exclusivity deals with high-profile streamers in December 2019, starting with DrLupo, TimTheTatman, and Lirik, who had a combined 10.

In May 2020, Twitch Interactive signed popular streamers Summit1g, dakotaz and JoshOG to multi-year exclusive deals.

Sisi Jiang, for Kotaku, reported that "excluding streams that are run by multiple people, there are no women in the top third of top-earning Twitch Interactive content creators"; in total, there are only three women in the top 100 and only one is a woman of color.

In 2017, Twitch Interactive remained the leading live streaming video service for video games in the US.

Twitch Interactive allows anyone to watch a live broadcast and does not require viewers to log in.

In September 2020, Twitch Interactive announced that it would test automated mid-roll advertising on streams, which cannot be controlled by the streamer.

Twitch Interactive offered a selection of royalty-free music for streamers to use, which was expanded upon later in January 2015.

In June 2020, Twitch Interactive received a large wave of DMCA takedown notices aimed at year-old VODs and "clips" that contain copyrighted music from 2017 to 2019.

Twitch Interactive complied with the takedowns and issued a number of copyright strikes against viewers.

Twitch Interactive already had licensing deals with the American societies ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and Global Music Rights.

Twitch Interactive took temporary action in May 2019 after channels related to the video game Artifact began to be used for inappropriate content.

Twitch Interactive then took steps to temporarily ban new accounts from streaming until they can resolve the issue.

Twitch Interactive considered these streams to be "not advertiser friendly", banning some of the more predominant channels that had taken this route.

In May 2021, Twitch Interactive clarified in a "Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches" post that it was not trying to discriminate against women or others through this action, but through content that they deemed to be "sexually suggestive".

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In February 2018, Twitch Interactive updated its acceptable content policies to direct that any content that it deemed hateful be suspended from its platform.

Twitch Interactive stated it would review all reported incidents and comply with law enforcement in any investigative efforts.

Twitch Interactive stated that "hateful conduct is not allowed" as the reason for the suspension.

Twitch Interactive had officially supported this type of activity since 2017 with the ability for a streamer to send all of their viewers to another channel as a raid.

In May 2022, following the mass shooting in Buffalo, the New York state attorney general's office announced an investigation into multiple online platforms, including Twitch Interactive, to determine their part in platforming or promoting hateful content.

In India, Twitch Interactive was reportedly blocked by Reliance-owned telecommunication company Jio as well as internet service providers JioFiber and Hathway in September 2020 as some users were illegally streaming matches of 2020 Indian Premier League on the platform.

In 2013, Twitch Interactive released a software development kit to allow any developer to integrate Twitch Interactive streaming into their software.