On March 14, Twitch announced that it would be shutting down the Watch Parties feature on their streaming platform on April 2, claiming its usage “has declined over the years.” Some Twitch users, however, believe Watch Parties were doomed from the start due to their flawed design.
Twitch posted the announcement on the Watch Parties feature article which previously served to explain its usage to viewers and creators. “We launched Watch Parties in 2020 to offer streamers a way to enjoy Prime Video content with their communities,” Twitch wrote. Some streamers did use the feature to greater or lesser extent, but its usage has dwindled over time and will subsequently be shut down with its resources allocated to other features, the company said. Some Twitch users on social media, however, thought the platform was doomed from the start due to its requiring Twitch Prime from viewers wishing to join.
One March 14, a Reddit thread saw hundreds of users commenting on Twitch’s decision to kill the watch party feature. “What did they expect?” wrote one user, criticizing the feature’s requirement of Twitch Prime for viewers who wanted to hop on and watch along with their favorite creators. Another user pointed out how the movies offered varied from country to country, and sometimes even those with Twitch Prime couldn’t participate in a watch party due to regional restrictions. This red tape likely contributed to the feature’s dwindling interest and thus its eventual termination.
Watch parties were relatively meta for a short while, but not in the way Twitch wanted. Streamers like Pokimane chose to stream popular media, such as TV shows or movies, live and without permission from copyright holders for a while. This eventually resulted in crackdowns on streamers and Twitch itself, and the meta soon died off. Maybe if Twitch had capitalized on the phenomenon properly, we wouldn’t be here today.
