Twitch Goes Round, TikTok Fan Clubs, Vtuber Shakeup + TV App Competition

Happy Day-Before Canada Day, everyone! Please make sure you go out and acquire some Canadian-made Maple Syrup in my honour, as it's probably the most easily accessible Canadian product globally. Sharing my newsletter with a streamer friend is a reasonable second-best option. Lastly, two newsletters ago, I opened a giveaway; today is the last day to enter (and the odds are great!) So with that, let's jump right into this week's news!

🟪 TWITCH

• Buttons on the platform have been updated to round the ends. It may mean more changes are coming, based on something I shared with Premium members nearly two years ago.
• Twitchcon San Diego 2025 tickets are now on sale—$240 for the 3-Day, $160 for Friday and Saturday, and $150 for Sunday. The Block Party Add-on is $115.
• Viewers may soon be able to earn badges for posting clips of streamers to YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram.
• Front Page feature for Partners got a few updates. Partners can now apply monthly and no longer need 50+ CCV. However, Multistreaming while featured is no longer allowed.
• Twitch reduced the maximum viewing resolution of streams in Russia to 720p due to economic reasons.
• The lower Affiliate requirements resulted in ~650 more affiliates per day than in the weeks prior.
• Arabic is now a supported language on the platform.
• The Summer Drop Fest started on Friday, featuring a mix of free and paid drops.
• Subscription Price Increases: Bahrain is now $2.74 (up from $2.49), while Egypt is now $1.70 (up from $1.49) (via Support).
• Twitch Japan released details of their first user opinion survey. Nothing unexpected.

🟥 YOUTUBE

• YouTube is increasing the minimum age to livestream from 13 to 16 years old.
• YouTube will soon add AI Overviews to your search results, featuring a conversational AI chatbot.

⬛ TIKTOK

• TikTok is rolling out Fan Club opt-ins for live streamers.
• TikTok claims it now has 130,000,000 users who stream live every day. I feel there's some lost context here??? 130M users streaming PER DAY is more than ALL the users who USE YouTube per day (122M) and more than Twitch has in total users PER MONTH (105M).
• Countdown Bidding is launching for auction-style TikTok Shop streams.
• Trump says he found a buyer for TikTok.

🔲 OTHERS

• Fossabot is now available on Kick.
• Meld can now stream to Kick.