A new action from Destiny 2 currently brings a lot of money to Twitch streamers who accompany the game. However, the thousands of euros do not come directly from Destiny 2, but from the players. If they want an emblem and a shader, they have to donate to Twitch streamers. This triggers a gold rush among the streamers. The model is clear: Epic Games and Fortnite.
This is how the action works: In Destiny 2, there is currently a special shader and an emblem. However, only players who link their Twitch account to their Bungie account and then donate two Twitch subscriptions to a Destiny 2 streamer receive these two cosmetics.
This costs the player about 10 €: The streamer gets between 5 and 7 € from it, depending on the deal he made with Twitch.
Twitch streamers in a gold rush
These are the effects: For the individual Destiny 2 streamer, the action has become incredibly lucrative in recent days:
- The largest Destiny streamer on Twitch, Gladd, talks about 28,137 subs. That may well be over $70,000 for him – and that within 42 hours.
- The PvP streamer Mtashed has gained nearly 10,000 subscriptions in 3 days. According to the website Forbes , that is $33,722.
- The streamer Ms 5000 Watts also thanks the fans for this action
- The German-speaking Twitch streamer Nexxoss Gaming has made about 470 subscriptions. That’s probably well over 1,000 €.
Players apparently love cosmetics
What is the inspiration? The big role model for this action is certainly “Epic Games” with their game Fortnite. They had a “Twitch Prime” action running in March and May 2018, which was a “game changer” for many Twitch streamers at the time. The additional income was substantial and allowed a number of streamers to professionalize.
The largest streamer of that time, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins said:
The power of Fortnite to influence people to do things for cosmetics is incredible.
Tyler “Ninja” Blevins.
Players were encouraged to sign up for a Twitch Prime subscription and received skin packs in Fortnite for that.
Anyone who has such a Twitch Prime subscription can also “donate” this Twitch Prime subscription to a streamer, who receives money for it. Since it is possible to get Twitch Prime subscriptions for free through Amazon Prime, an incredible gold rush occurred back then.
At that time, Twitch star Tyler “Ninja” Blevins said that he gained 230,000 subscriptions in those 2 months – a fortune.
In addition, Fortnite has supported Twitch streamers with further actions. For instance, players can send 5 cents from every euro they spend in the game to their favorite content creator via a specific code.
Fortnite was incredibly successful in binding Twitch streamers to their game.
Streamers should be bound to a game this way
What do the companies want to achieve with this? Destiny 2 and Fortnite are making the actions worthwhile for the streamers to broadcast their games on Twitch and not others. This enhances the streamers’ loyalty if they directly benefit financially from the success of a game.
The success of the action could be seen in Fortnite, which dominated Twitch for over a year until the game ran out of steam in 2019.
Fortnite and Destiny expect that increased presence on Twitch will lead to new games, constant presence, and higher revenues. Ultimately, these “skin-for-subscription” actions cost them nothing, except for a few cosmetics. The money comes from the players.
The current largest streamer on Twitch is Turner “Tfue” Tenney. He started his career in 2015 with Crota runs in Destiny 1. In March 2020, the Fortnite star checked in on Destiny 2 again, but didn’t find much luck there:
The largest streamer on Twitch Returns to Destiny 2: “Dogshit”
