Pokimane says she won’t be impressed with YouTube until she sees a “livestreaming ecosystem”

Twitch star Pokimane recently went on stream to give her opinion on some of the most glaring differences between YouTube and Twitch in light of Sykkuno’s recent move.

In an unpredictable announcement, Sykkuno became the latest Twitch streamer to make the move YouTube in an exclusive streaming contract. Though many other content creators have generally praised Sykkuno for his decision, the former Twitch star’s transfer has once again sparked debate between the two platforms.

During a recent livestream, Pokimane said that while creators can be successful on both platforms, there are some significant differences. In her opinion, only creators with pre-existing audiences and popularity stand a chance of finding success on YouTube since the platform is significantly less developed for streaming.

“Streaming on YouTube, albeit not being a bad thing, is very different from Twitch because you are a little bit more on an island,” Pokimane said. “There’s not very clear discoverability.”

Pokimane continued to say that she finds it perfectly acceptable when popular streamers switch to YouTube, but she notices a clear lack of support for smaller streamers on the site.

“I don’t think I’ll be impressed until I see an ecosystem of livestreaming on YouTube,” the Twitch star said. “Twitch has the ecosystem, Twitch has the culture, Twitch has the community.”

Pokimane went on to re-emphasize the need for a pre-existing audience on YouTube, pointing to two of the platform’s most successful cases, Valkyrae and Dr Disrespect, and how they found initial success on Twitch.

Pokimane is certainly not the only content creator to criticize YouTube’s streamer support since even Dr Disrespect has taken shots at his own platform. Though Pokimane isn’t entirely opposed to the platform, she certainly seems happy with her place on Twitch.