This week, Ludwig has warned against a growing trend in the streaming community where entertainers “multistream” by hosting broadcasts on Twitch and YouTube simultaneously—a practice he thinks will eventually kill long-term viewership.
This new streaming trend has roared to life off the back of several high-profile stars, including TimTheTatman and DrLupo, coming off-contract from one-site exclusivity. Platforms binding the biggest stars in the scene to multi-year deals where they could only appear on one site were all the rage across the early 2020s. That goldrush eventually ended, and most stars find themselves free to stream anywhere again.
As a result, stars are trying out new options, with multistreaming the latest fad. At its core, it’s simple: The star does exactly what they’d always do, but on paper they rake in twice as much engagement and viewership across two sites.
Not so, says Ludwig, whose declared himself a “multistreaming hater.” Instead, the super popular YouTuber explained, the boost in viewership is patching over a bigger problem—the two-pronged method “fractures” a fanbase and leaves no one site as a strong bastion when it comes to building a following.
The other problem is streamers have to interact with their fanbases through chatrooms, a core principle of streaming made very famous by Twitch. With two pages and two chatrooms, streamers will “have a natural bias towards their preferred platform [which would] leave one of the chats as the step-child;” a very easy way to stifle growth.
“The next Kai Cenat won’t be a multi-streamer who has 50,000 average viewers across two platforms,” Ludwig wrote in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter) this week. “It’s going to be a streamer who dominates with 80,000 on just one, in my opinion. I think if [you’re] growing… marry yourself to one platform.”
The streamer did concede if anyone’s only goal in the whole equation is “more viewership” than the new split-site practice does make a modicum of sense and would eventually help sell sponsorships for more revenue.
Overall, however, he’s staunchly against multistreaming in its current form and said it simply makes “zero sense” for him to consider it with his established fanbase.
While Ludwig has now put his foot down on multistreaming, others are already embracing the combo-broadcasts with open arms. TimTheTatman is leading the way on that front, with the recently returned Twitch superstar popping up on the Amazon site at the same time as running streams on his YouTube profile. Said the Call of Duty personality, “I think multicasting is the wave. I’ve been saying this.”
Earlier this year, veteran streamer Ninja was among the first to broadcast across several platforms; he said he had to “thread the needle” by speaking to the Twitch CEO and then appeared on sites like YouTube, Twitch, and Kick simultaneously. He also looped in TikTok and Instagram in what became a site buffet for fans.
Rule-wise, multistreaming has been allowed on Twitch since late 2023.
Published: Sep 3, 2024 09:10 pm