Welcome to the Twitch Graveyard, a chronological timeline of when features met their untimely end. I've wanted to create this because I'm intrigued to see Twitch's feature progression and deprecation. This is NOT meant to be a document that elicits negativity about Twitch, but rather a historic look back at how it has changed over the course of years. And, surely, there will be some reminiscing about 'the good ole days.' Enjoy, and if you think of anything I may have missed, please send me a message on Twitter or via the Contact Form!
Last Updated: November 2022.
2023 Deaths
- ☠️ IRC Chat Commands: 2013 - February 2023
To better align Twitch Chat into the Twitch API, IRC Chat commands are being deprecated to migrate to the API. After February 18, 2023, commands run on IRC will no longer function - a decision that has received mixed reactions.
2022 Deaths
- ☠️ Amazon Music Extension: August 2019 - November 2022
The Amazon Music Extension was a tool that allowed streamers to play copyrighted music (NOT heard on stream) but instead offered an overlay that would allow their community to click and listen. It required both parties to have Amazon Music. In light of DMCA issues, it was an option for creators - although it was not widely promoted. Usage was probably minimal, and it was discontinued on November 1st, 2022. - ☠️ Hosts: July 2014 - October 2022
Launched as a way to share your favorite creators on your own channel, Hosts had been a staple of the community since 2014. Running the /host command after a stream ended allowed creators to send their community to another channel. (Raids were launched in 2017, which improved this functionality.) In September 2022, it was announced that Hosts were being removed due to viewer confusion. - ☠️ Creator Exclusivity*: July 2011 - 2022? 2023?**
Since the inception of the Partner Program, Partnered streamers were required to be ALL live content exclusive to Twitch. The Affiliate program launched in 2017 also limited creators to live exclusivity (no multi-streaming). In August 2022, Twitch announced that they would no longer be enforcing that part of the contract. Partners and Affiliates could multi-stream to 'mobile first' services like Tiktok or Instagram, but NOT YouTube. **The official removal of this provision is slated for 2023, but enforcement of it ended in 2022. - ☠️ Twitch Identity Tags: May 2021 - August 2022
After a year-long fight by the trans community for a Trans tag, Twitch finally acquiesced and announced that 350 new tags would be launched. Since then, hundreds of others have been added. But, with the announcement of freeform tags, the centralized control over tags by Twitch appears* to be going away, rendering the Identity Tag launch on its deathbed. - ☠️ Reruns: January 2018 - June 2022
Reruns allowed users to re-broadcast any of their previous content. This included the ability to rerun playlists of VODs. In June, functionality changed, and VODs on Twitch were no longer the source of rerun content; instead, having to broadcast them from your software of choice AS a rerun. The change was because reruns were only used by 0.2% of streamers. - ☠️ Twitchverse: January 2020 - June 2022*
Twitchverse was a digital fish tank filled with Partner fishes. Partners could add and keep their fish in the tank by feeding it emotes. Simultaneously, a live display of Twitchverse was being broadcast at Twitch HQ. The live feed went offline in mid-June 2022; *however, Twitch HQ's tank is still live. - ☠️ Friends: May 2016 - May 2022
The Friends feature was first launched in 2016 to add additional social features to the platform. Once you had a Friend, you could see their online status on the platform - Online, Idle or Offline. As there was no intrinsic reason to be friends with people, having killed off nearly all social features - everyone lost their Friends in May 2022. - ☠️ Activity Sharing: October 2016 - May 2022
Activity Sharing was a social feature that let you share who you were watching with your Friends. You could toggle it on and off with your platform status. With the death of the Friends feature, this function went with it. - ☠️ Bits Auto-Refill: November 2019 - May 2022
Bits Auto-Refill allowed people to automatically refill their Bits balance when it reached a certain low level. The feature was unexpectedly shut down in 2022 based on Community Feedback. - ☠️ Curse + Twitch Desktop App: September 2016 - April 2022
In August 2016, Twitch acquired the communication platform Curse. In September of the same year, it began to offer cross-platform syncing. This led to August 2017, when it was rebranded as the Twitch Desktop App. The app served as a launch point for many other products and features. - ☠️ Event-Based Drops: August 2020 - April 2022
Event-Based Drops was a system for game developers to add unique Twitch-based drops (cosmetics) as certain conditions were met in-game. The hope was to reward communities for watching a big moment happening in-game (i.e., a streamer beats a boss.) Due to lack of interest and high complexity, it was shut down in early 2022. - ☠️ Pizza Time, Silent Reading, Character Creation, Chores and Odd Jobs, Literally Just Chatting: April 2022 - April 2022
On April Fools 2022, Twitch launched five new categories. These were real categories that you could stream from. However, they were not long-lived, and ~7 days later, the categories were no longer accessible. - ☠️ iOS Sub Tokens: October 2019 - March 2022
iOS Sub Tokens were a way to offer people the ability to subscribe on Apple devices. They were phased out in March after subscribing directly became available to Twitch users. (But you should never subscribe on mobile - it costs a ton more than Desktop.) - ☠️ Rituals: October 2017 - January 2022
Twitch Rituals was a new viewer engagement tool. It encouraged new viewers to post an emote in chat, which let the community know they were new. Rituals were shut down in January 2022, and a new "Community Introduction" system was launched in its place.
2021 Deaths
- ☠️ Prime Gaming Loot Gifting: September 2019 - July 2021
Twitch Prime Loot Gifting (later Prime Gaming) was a feature that allowed you to share select items from your Twitch Prime monthly rewards. Those with Prime could share 3x their items, which would then be distributed randomly in the chat. Unceremoniously, it was removed in July, according to a Help article's last update. - ☠️ Amazon Blacksmith: September 2017 - July 2021
Amazon Blacksmith was a way for creators to sell Amazon products and earn commission from those sales. Blacksmith was originally launched in 2017 as "Gear on Amazon" but was improved and renamed in October 2018. The feature allowed you to show off the gear you use to stream and integrations with games to sell other related products, such as during E3. - ☠️ Watch Ads for Bits: October 2016 - June 2021
Twitch launched the Cheer system in 2016, and to help people get more acquainted with Bits, the Watch Ads for Bits system was created. In exchange for watching a 30-second ad, you would get 5-Bits - some as much as 100. Though past 2018 it became unreliable and ultimately was officially removed in 2021. - ☠️ Email Your Subscribers: Early 2017 - May 2021
Twitch launched the ability for Partners to email their subscribers as an additional way to communicate with them outside of Twitch. Affiliates got this functionality when the Affiliate program was created. It was initially meant to be shut down for a couple of months while they worked to prevent spicy links from being shared, but it never returned. - ☠️ /me Colors: July 2014 - April 2021
The command /me has been a staple command since the beginning of Twitch. Doing /me up until April 2021, changed the color of your message to match your username. Twitch killed this functionality, instead simply adding italics instead to 'reduce the potential for abuse.' - ☠️ Versus: September 2020 - January 2021
Versus by Twitch was a tool aimed at making hosting esports competitions easier. Giving players and organizers a way to communicate, sign up, and create brackets while allowing viewers to find and see results. It launched as a Beta with a dedicated Discord but shut down soon afterward. The last note I can find about it is January 2021.
2020 Deaths
- ☠️ Twitch Sings: April 2019 - December 2020
Twitch Sings was a karaoke-style game that allowed creators to sing along to music licensed by Twitch. It featured interactive gaming elements, including chat-based engagement, challenges, and a scoring system. It also allowed collaboration in the form of duets with other singers. Ultimately, it wasn't popular enough to justify the cost of licensing the music. - ☠️ Premieres: January 2018 - April 2020
Premieres was a short-lived video product aimed at making uploaded content more engaging. You would upload and schedule a 'first viewing' event and get your community to watch it together in chat. It was shut down due to lack of use. - ☠️ Music Library: April 2015 - 2020(?)
The Twitch Music Library was a distant predecessor to Twitch Soundtrack. It offered streamers 1000+ songs cleared for usage on stream, which would not result in DMCA or muted audio. There's no official end date for the Library, but the last reference I can find to it was in 2020.
2019 Deaths
- ☠️ Commenting on VODs: May 2017 - November 2019
When Twitch launched Uploads in 2016, there was no way to comment on uploads. That functionality wouldn't be added until May 2017. Several months later, in September, commenting on VODs was added as part of a chat update (which also included semi-threaded replies). This came to an end as a result of changing priorities. - ☠️ Rooms: February 2018 - October 2019
Rooms was a social feature launched to allow communities to have gated rooms for Moderators or Subscribers. It also allowed you to create custom rooms, promoted as a feature for things like spoilers. The feature was not widely used and shut down on October 30, 2019. - ☠️ Events: March 2017 - Q4 2019
Events were a way to create a schedule-like system for your big streaming events. They had their own tab on channel profiles and allowed people to set reminders or add them to their calendars. The feature appears to have been phased out sometime in Q4 2019 but returned as part of a bigger channel page overhaul in May 2020. - ☠️ Twitch Weekly: March 2014 - July 2019
Twitch Weekly was a Twitch-run community news show covering everything going on at Twitch. Hosted by DjWheat initially and later cohosted by Anna Prosser, the show grew from a standard news format to a full-on community production. It covered news from Twitch, featured community, interviews, clips, special events, and more. - ☠️ Communities: February 2017 - July 2019
Twitch Communities was a discovery tool aimed at "helping streamers connect to the most relevant audiences and help viewers discover streams that fit their interests." Communities acted as a targeted category system (which served as a precursor to tags). Streamers continue lamenting its passing, which occurred mid-2019 as the Front Page Discovery system was introduced. Communities also had trusted members who could remove streamers incorrectly streaming to the Community. - ☠️ Channel Feeds: July 2016 - July 2019
Channel Feeds was released widely in the summer of 2016 to offer a timeline communication tool on creators' channels directly. Initially, it allowed people to leave Emote reactions, then added comments, and later played a part in Pulse. It was shut down as Twitch changed the Front Page discovery system in 2019. - ☠️ Clip Champ/Power Clipper: February 2018 - Spring 2019
The Clip Champ badge was awarded to people who created four clips over a month and achieved 50 combined views of those clips. It was renamed the Power Clipper in June of that year. While no announcement was made, and the badge still exists on Twitch, it appears the functionality was phased out sometime in the spring of 2019. - ☠️ Recaps: April 2019
Announced at Twitchcon Europe 2019, Recaps were going to be an automatically generated Highlight Reel of your streams. The video for the Recaps would pull from both Clips and other signals (chat engagement) to create the recaps - and allow creators to edit them. Slated for beta test in June 2019... they never came out and were never mentioned again.
2018 Deaths
- ☠️ Global Moderators: December 2014 - December 2018
Twitch was community moderated from the beginning, with early Admins and Global Moderators being unpaid volunteers. The primary difference between Admins and Global Moderators was that Admins were in charge of responding to user-submitted cases against channels, whereas Global Moderators were just vetted community watchdogs. As time went on, more and more of this group were made into full-time Admin contractors, and those that were able were being recruited into Admins, and Global Mods were left without a clear purpose. The Global Mod program was discontinued in 2018. Within a year, Admins were also discontinued, being renamed to Safety Ops and full staff instead of contractors. - ☠️ Game Purchases: April 2017 - November 2018
As Twitch sought to build out unique monetization methods, it became a Game Seller. This feature shared 5% of revenue with the Partner whose channel games were purchased from. Games could be downloaded via the Twitch Desktop App or services like Uplay. Not enough revenue was generated, so it was shut down. - ☠️ Crates: April 2017 - November 2018
Crates was a Twitch loot system that rewarded you when you purchased games. The rewards were in-game items or in the form of Twitch Bits, Badges, and Emotes. With the closure of the Games Store, the Crates system was shut down. - ☠️ Creative Category: October 2015 - September 2018
The original Creative category was sparked by Bob Ross and aimed to unite and support creative streamers. It offered a dedicated landing page, carousel, and contextual hashtags. The creative category was relaunched in October 2021 but lacks staff support, a carousel, a quick partner program, and a culture that had originally attracted streamers to the Creative category. - ☠️ IRL Category: December 2016 - September 2018
The IRL Category was launched in December 2016 to give non-gaming content its own home. Spurred by the success of Pokemon Go streamers, IRL was Twitch's first foray outside of Gaming + Creative. The category would later be split up into a slew of new categories, including Just Chatting, which just became a rebranded IRL. - ☠️ Ad Free with Twitch Prime: September 2016 - August 2018
Twitch Prime (now Prime Gaming) was initially launched at Twitchcon in 2016. One of the core features of the Amazon Prime-associated product was Ad-Free viewing across all of Twitch. In August 2018, it was announced that this would be going away as ad revenue was needed. - ☠️ Roadmap: June 2018 - H2 2018.
Twitch announced a plan to share roadmap details through Trello with the community. This included details about live projects, ones in progress, and features in planning. The idea was to give creators insight into what Twitch was working on to ensure they were better prepared for changes. However, it was quickly discontinued. - ☠️ Pulse: March 2017 - July 2018
Pulse was a Discovery and Social feature that added a timeline-like system to the front page. For viewers, creator Channel Feed posts would get shared in Pulse, alongside other people they followed - akin to a Facebook feed. Feedback from streamers ultimately led to it being shut down. - ☠️ Twitch 10M Hours Trophy: April 2018
Only ever mentioned at PAX East 2018, Aureylian revealed a new trophy for streamers who had garnered 10M hours watched on their channels. To my knowledge, there is no other reference to this in any publicly available documentation. As such, it lived and died for a day. - ☠️ Twitch Inbox + Messages: ~2013 - March 2018
Before there were Whispers, Twitch had a Message and Inbox system. Messages allowed you to communicate with people directly on the platform in an Email-lite style system. It was removed in 2018, leading to some concept images of what could have been. - ☠️ VOD Playlists: September 2015 - January 2018
VOD Playlists was the precursor to Reruns. They allowed you to create playlists of your previous VODs and run them 24/7 on your channel. The videos played automatically but would pause if you hosted a channel. - ☠️ Pinned Cheers: November 2016 - 2018
Pinned Cheers automatically pinned the highest cheerers' message to the top of the chat. If someone else cheered more than that, their message replaced that one - creating a feedback loop of ever bigger cheers. This was a precursor to the Bits Leaderboard that exists today. - ☠️ TwitchPresents: 2015 - 2018
TwitchPresents was an owned channel most known for airing marathons of popular shows. Marathons included Pokemon (2018), Inspector Gadget (2018), Power Rangers (2017), Yugioh (2017), RWBY (2017), and Bob Ross (2015). The channel has since then been turned into a Shopping Network type stream a couple of times a year called Pog Picks.
2016 Deaths
- ☠️ Bookmarks: May 2013 - August 2016
Twitch Bookmarks allowed users to bookmark particular moments of a VOD that you could quickly jump back into. While there's no official end date, it appears that once Clips were made available in 2016, there was no more need for Bookmarks. - ☠️ Top Broadcaster Program: June 2015 - 2016
The Twitch Top Broadcaster Program was a promotion to reward top broadcasters for their success. Broadcasters who had 3000 average viewership would receive a unique Twitch track jacket, VIP party access, and corporate partnerships.
2014 Deaths
- ☠️ Unlimited VOD Storage: June 2011 - August 2014
Initially, Twitch allowed unlimited VOD storage. On August 27, 2014, the system, which enables 14-days of VOD storage (with 60-days for Turbo Subscribers and Partners), was launched in its place. - ☠️ Justin.TV (Service): October 2007 - August 2014
Justin.tv was the startup that Twitch spun out from. Gaming performed so well on Justin.tv, that they created a new site for it - Twitch.tv. With Twitch's growing success, they shut down Justin.tv in August 2014, and were subsequently acquired by Amazon later that month. - ☠️ Twitch Live Annotations: July 2014 - ?
Twitch Live Annotations allowed you to let people on YouTube videos know you were live on Twitch. I have no idea when they were phased out (or if it was by YouTube themselves).
Experiments that Never Officially Launched
- ☠️ Making Cheering Easier aka Super Cheers: April 2022 - May 2022
An experiment in making cheering easier was done in the Spring of 2022, aimed at offering whole dollar cheers instead of the Bits system. Streamers who were selected to be involved had their Bits disabled on their channel. This system offered whole Cheers of $1, $5, $10, $50, and $100. Many involved in the test expressed their discontent on Twitter about not being able to opt-out. - ☠️ Boost This Stream Channel Points: December 2020 - 2022?
Boost This Stream was a discovery-type system that allowed communities to use their channel points to achieve a goal. If they achieved the goal, the streamer's channel would be featured on the Front Page for a limited time. I have not seen this feature in a few months, but do not know if it's officially dead. - ☠️ Boost This Stream Paid: September 2021 - April 2022
Boost This Stream didn't end with Channel Points and started testing a Paid version. This feature offered the exact same function as the free channel points test but put it behind a paywall of $1 per 1000 impressions. - ☠️ Boost Train: March 2022 - April 2022
Boost Train was a continuation of the Boost system, previously tested as a free Channel Points feature and later a Paid test. Boost Train offered the same functionality but instead tied it to the Hype Train. Higher Hype Train success meant more front-page impressions. It was shut down after testers used it to porn onto the Front Page. - ☠️ Chants: May 2021 - February 2022
Chants gave Mods and Creators the ability to help people spam the chat with the same message. While popular, the experiment was shut down by Twitch because "we observed negative impacts to minutes watched for significant groups of creators." - ☠️ Bits 2.0 Cheering Experience: May 2021 - August 2021
Twitch experimented with some unique Cheer functionality. The three Cheer interactions allowed you to embed an image in chat, offer larger colorful text, and rain bits over the chat. The experiment ended without any further release. - ☠️ Ad Free for Partners: January 2021 - March 2021
Ad Free for Partners was a feature in testing in early 2021. Announced in the Partner Discord, it was meant to remove Ads as a perk for being a Partner. In the following months, it was scaled back (only when searching for a raid) and ultimately removed as a feature. - ☠️ Paid Celebrations: April 2020 - November 2020
Celebrations was a paid feature test in 2020 that created Fireworks like effects on a stream. The feature gave Twitch an excessive 50% cut of the total cost. Later, Celebrations were folded into Hype Trains, where they still exist today.
(In process of being added - thanks for your patience!)
Anything missing?
I've done my best to research and document the various launches that no longer exist. But I'd love to update this if you know about others! Please send me a message on Twitter or via the Contact Form!
