Twitch developer Jon Bulava announced that Twitch will add to its extensions policy, setting new regulations in place to keep overlay extensions relevant to the stream. This new policy will not be put in place until May 9 but was revealed earlier so developers who do not meet these requirements can update their extensions.
Going forward, extensions will have to meet one of two qualifications. Overlay extensions must either “display information related to or relevant to what is happening on the stream” or “must be interactive. For example, they must change/enhance the outcome of what is happening on the stream,” according to Bulava.
This new policy will also be echoed in two new additions to Twitch’s extension best practices. These guiding principles will ask users to place non-interactive extensions in panels and to only use component extensions that are relevant to the content on the stream.
Overlay extensions refer to any supplementary content on the stream that is not actively being broadcasted. Many of these overlays can be displayed as part of the content but can be hidden by viewers at their discretion. Global extensions refer to extensions that can be installed on any Twitch channel and are not broadcaster specific.
Bulava said Twitch is making this change to improve the viewer experiences that Twitch extensions are meant to provide. This means keeping the number of “unnecessary” overlays to a minimum for a cleaner viewing experience. Twitch warned that two months after the policy is in place, extensions not meeting either of the requirements are subject to audits.
Published: Mar 8, 2022 12:36 pm