Twitch CEO admits timing of revenue share announcement was intentional at TwitchCon

Twitch CEO Emmett Shear took the stage during today’s TwitchCon opening ceremony with an elephant the size of the San Diego Convention Center in the room.

Just two weeks ago, his platform announced that it was making big changes to subscription revenue share splits that some of the platform’s top creators will receive beginning next year. Though the convention opening show usually tries to maintain an uplifting mood, it would have been in poor form for Shear to go without addressing the move that’s going to hurt a lot of streamers’ bottom line.

Following about 30 seconds of exchanging pleasantries with the audience, Shear quickly put on a serious face to talk about the partner revenue share changes that will go into effect next June. 

But as you might expect during a show intended to hype up a crowd for the weekend, Shear made his comments brief and largely deflected the topic, outside of admitting that the timing of the announcement being right before TwitchCon was intentional.

“We shared that news before TwitchCon specifically because we knew many of those people who are affected would be here in person and you would have questions,” he said. “We wanted to be able to talk about it here, not spring it on you after you had gone home.”

He went on to say that Twitch execs would be answering questions about the changes at a live version of the platform’s Patch Notes show, which is where the platform announces news and updates about features and tools on the platform.

Shear spent a little more than 20 minutes on stage following that announcement, talking about various topics that Twitch wanted to highlight coming into the weekend. While the platform has flooded users with updates about experimental features and news about new tools in the past two weeks, Shear primarily spent his time talking about the expansion of Twitch’s charity streaming tool and the rolling out of its Guest Star feature.

The platform’s Patch Notes show will take place on Sunday at 3:30pm CT on the platform’s official Twitch channel. While Shear said that execs will field questions regarding the revenue split change, it’s worth noting that Patch Notes often covers a multitude of topics, so it may not be a primary focus of the show.