Raiding on Twitch is one of the primary tools streamers can use to help support fellow streamers.
Content creators with a large lump some of viewers will “raid” someone else’s channel usually at the end of their broadcast, effectively taking all of their viewers and throwing them into another streamer’s channel.
This not only exposes viewers to new streamers who might share the same sensibilities with the ones they regularly watch, but it also helps boost the viewership numbers of those being raided.
The act of raiding isn’t all that complicated from the perspective of a streamer either.
To start a raid, all you need to do is use the command “/raid” in your chat followed by the name of the channel you want to raid. For instance, if you wanted to raid Ninja, you would type “/raid Ninja.”
Once you’ve entered that command, there will be a 10-second countdown that appears on your screen. Once that countdown has ended, a light purple “Raid Now” button will be clickable.
After you click the button, you and your viewers will be shipped over to whatever channel you decided to raid.
There is about an 80-second timer after the “Raid Now” button becomes active for streamers to cancel their raid. If you don’t click “Raid Now” or “Cancel” before that time, the raid will automatically begin.
Once your viewers are in another streamer’s channel, the content creator will get a notification that they are being raided. The notification will also inform them of how many viewers the raider is bringing.
If you’ve been raided and missed the notification, you can check to see who raided you by clicking the purple cog button below your chat. The button will pop out a menu from which you can select “View Recent Raids.”
As far as etiquette goes, streamers that are raiding someone typically make sure to tell their chat room to play nice in the new streamers channel. Often times, they’ll tell viewers to spam a certain message so that the raided streamer knows they’re being raided and by whom.
Once a streamer has raided a channel, it’s also a common courtesy for the streamer raiding someone’s chat to say hello in chat and interact with the streamer being raided for a minute or two. Of course, there are no hard set rules for things like that though.
Raiding and being raided are one of the strongest ways for streamers to grow Twitch’s gaming communities, and there are many different strategies content creators use to make sure that their raids have the strongest positive impact.
While it’s ultimately up to each individual to determine how to best utilize the raiding tool, understanding it’s basic mechanics goes a long way in figuring out how to grow your stream and the streams of your fellow content creators.
