As Twitch and YouTube vie for supremacy in the gaming livestreaming space, it’s only natural that each would have some similarities. And yesterday, Twitch unveiled a new feature that’s eerily similar to one YouTube has.
The platform has started to roll out “Elevated Chat” capabilities to some broadcasters as a part of an experiment. If you have any experience with YouTube streams, you’ll quickly notice that the feature looks just like YouTube’s Super Chat.
Both Super Chat and Elevated Chat allow viewers to spend money to make their messages stand out and get them pinned to the top of a channel’s chat for an amount of time that varies depending on how much money a viewer pays.
It’s commonplace for features like these to be copied from one platform to another depending on how successful they are. But following yesterday’s Twitch news, many people quickly noted that the scaling prices for the Twitch monetized chat weren’t as friendly as those on YouTube.
Elevated Chat vs. Super Chat costs
There are five Elevated Chat options on Twitch, but on YouTube, viewers can select any price that they’d like for Super Chats. The price they select will determine how long the message ends up on the Super Chat ticker.
For $5 to $9.99, Super Chats will stay pinned for around two minutes. On Twitch, $5 gets 30 seconds and $10 gets one minute. At the highest ends, $100 on Twitch elevates a message for 150 seconds. YouTube Super Chats can get more time in the spotlight than that for less than $20.
It is worth noting that Twitch’s Elevated Chat is only in the experimental phase and could see changes following feedback over the next few weeks. The experiment, which started yesterday, will last four weeks.
Elevated Chat vs. Super Chat revenue share
When it comes to revenue sharing, both platforms have a similar split, but there is a crucial difference when one looks at the details. Both YouTube and Twitch tell streamers that the split for these features is 70-30 in favor of creators after taxes.
But YouTube covers the cost of transaction costs, like credit card fees. Twitch does not take on those same costs for Elevated Chats. The Elevated Chat split is after taxes and fees. This means that a Super Chat would net more for a streamer than an equivalently priced Elevated Chat.
The details surrounding Twitch’s Elevated Chat could be adjusted based on feedback during the experiment. This article will be updated to reflect any changes Twitch may make.
Published: Sep 30, 2022 03:36 pm