Twitch’s emphasis on maximizing profits through increasing ads and changing creator revenue splits has led to viewers and streamers alike expressing their frustration. And yesterday, popular variety streamer MoonMoon went a step past revenue splits and ads to give his insight on how even contract negotiations have changed with the platform.
Moon has been on the platform since 2016, and he said that he historically negotiates his contract by himself. The rising influence of Twitch’s parent company Amazon made his most recent contract talks less pleasant than they previously had been, though.
“I went easy,” he said. “I didn’t get a fucking lawyer. I went in assuming I was going to be talking to the same human beings—and I stress ‘human beings’—that I had been talking to for years in other contract negotiations. But they don’t exist anymore, motherfucker. The humans have been pushed out by the fucking lizard snake people that bought Twitch out three years ago, dawg.”
While he did not go into details on his contract, he’s not the first person to say Twitch’s negotiation tactics have become increasingly cold. In discussing their decisions to move platforms, many of the most popular creators that left Twitch for YouTube, like Myth, expressed how much more welcoming YouTube staff treated them.
Given the platform’s recent announcement that it intends on cutting the split that some of its top creators get from subscriptions, some have threatened to leave the platform. Others, like CodeMiko and Nick Polom, have said they plan on changing their content strategy to focus more on YouTube videos.
