Twitchcon Vegas: Simulcasting, Animated Emotes, and All the Other Announcements!

Zach Bussey -

With Twitchcon Vegas wrapping up on Sunday, I'm sure anyone who attended is experiencing the mixed emotions of returning home. Feeling a level of excitement and rejuvenation, but sad that you may not see those friends for another year! Personally, I'm grateful to have met so many of you, and I cannot thank you enough for your kind words. If I had any regrets, it's that I didn't get to meet everyone I wanted to (something to look forward to next year back in California) and that the moments were sometimes too short! Being a creator can be lonely at times, but it was nice to feel some real in-person human connection for a few days!

And to everyone who signed up for the newsletter while seeking parties and events to attend at Twitchcon, welcome! I hope you found something fun to attend, and I think you'll find great value in these weekly recaps as a creator! If you have any feedback, please feel free to reply directly. But with that, let's get into the news!

Twitch News

  • Twitch creators, effective immediately, will be able to multi-stream anywhere they want. However, there are conditions disallowing sharing links to other services, nor can you use third-party services to combine activities such as merging chats to show on stream, nor can you make your Twitch stream look worse than any other place you multi-stream.
  • Affiliates and Partners will soon get twice the animated emotes. You'll also unlock additional slots by using Twitch's First Party Alerts.
  • For anyone who isn't currently part of the mobile Discovery Feed experiment and wants to check it out, this link should add it to your account.
  • Twitch First Party Alerts will add custom emote Alerts and Third-Party interactions like Tipping.
  • A new December Holiday promotion (akin to Subtember) will offer discounts on Subs, Gift Subs, and Bits, plus a unique themed Hype Train.
  • Chat Warnings will allow moderators to send private warnings to chatters that they will need to acknowledge before being able to continue chatting.
  • The Off-Service Conduct policy has added Doxxing and Swatting as reasons they will enforce against.
  • Smart Detection Auto-mod settings are now available to all creators.
  • Video Embed Autoplay is subject to new rules to ensure the embed is a "substantive or meaningful" component of the page. Between now and November 1st, non-compliant domains will receive a warning. This follows news from earlier this month that Dan Clancy was seeking a list of 'worst offenders.'
  • A new global animated emote, "TwitchconHype" launched this weekend.
  • Guest Star has been rebranded as Stream Together, and they'll soon add a "Drop-In" function to indicate if you're open to guests and who can join. In 2024, your viewership will be shared with anyone you're collaborating with, and a merge chat function will be released.
  • Based on my data, Twitchcon Las Vegas had approximately 26,000 attendees.
  • Creator dashboards now have a new "Clips Viewership and Analytics" tab.
  • A new Bits Card is being launched with a new modern design.
  • Alejo's Pronoun Extension is being updated to allow more customization.
  • A USA-based Hype Challenge starts on November 6th for invited Partners. The top goal for creators (roughly $30,000 in Bits/Subs) is Twitchcon Tickets and a Hotel stay.
  • New research suggests Twitch poses a risk for minors, as nearly half share their real name, while half share their location. The researchers suggest Twitch needs to do more to protect underage creators (13-17 year olds).
  • Digiday interviewed Twitch's Chief Marketing Officer about brands, community, and Twitchcon.
  • It's not entirely news, but Twitch and YouTube aren't dropping money for talent like they did in 2020.
  • Polygon says that Twitch is Bleeding Talent. I don't see it, as most of the deals are non-exclusive. Twitch hasn't lost anyone they haven't banned.
  • Twitch's LAX office has won an Award of Merit for Small Project design.
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