Compared to last week, this one was a sleeper, and as your resident streaming news guy, I appreciated the reprieve! This week we've got creator stories from Ludwig and Sykkuno, a few things Twitch got up to, and a proper post-mortem for Venn - a death everyone saw coming. But perhaps most importantly, I got back-to-back solo wins in Fortnite on stream. Let's get into the news!
Twitch News and Platform Stories
This week's most significant news piece continued the "top streamers being bought out by YouTube" storyline. This time the streamer was Sykkuno, Twitch's (apparent) 28th highest earner and 167th by average viewership over the last year. While the details of his contract are private, according to the newly minted YouTube streamer, the final nail in the coffin was that Twitch's negotiating team spelled his name wrong. The departures may continue, as DisguisedToast claims at least five other streamers are negotiating to make the jump.
Twitch spent much of the week keeping a low profile after last week's fireworks. However, they did launch a couple of changes. Predictions, long limited to two options, were expanded to 10. Some creators also saw a chat update in their stream in what is being called Creator Chat Highlights. This gives creators the ability to help distinguish @mentions, moderators, subscribers, and first-time chatters—nice quality of life update. Lastly, we saw a small test late in the week to better display chat engagements in an easy-to-view chart. But that feature (and many others) have been secretly available for a while!
(And if you noticed your Twitchcon Amsterdam badge is missing - so has everyone else. Perhaps a bug, or maybe a change coming to reintroduce a year to the badge?)
That's all the big Twitch stories from the week, but there's plenty more below that you'll get access to by joining the mailing list for free!
