Twitch has a promotional campaign running, the “Subtember”: At first it was buggy and granted everyone a discount on subscriptions. Now the fix is here and some streamers find the campaign useless. Because it goes against their interests and the basic idea of Twitch to build a channel long-term. It now shows that Amazon only wants to lure new customers into the payment system, they just want to make money.
This is a subscription on Twitch: With a subscription, a viewer financially supports a streamer and enjoys some benefits: Depending on the channel, they receive emotes or have access to the chat when it’s otherwise restricted.
These “Subscriptions” are an important source of income for Twitch streamers: A normal “Level 1” subscription costs about €5, and the streamer gets roughly half of that. Fortnite star Ninja earned about $250,000 in some months in 2018 solely through Twitch subscriptions.
This is Subtember: The “Subtember” is a play on words from “Subscription”, the subscription, and the month of September.
Anyone who wants to subscribe to a streamer on Twitch can do so in September 2020 at a cheaper price than usual:
- A 1-month subscription costs 20% less in September
- A 3-month subscription is 25% cheaper than usual
- A 6-month subscription is 30% cheaper
But there is a huge catch: The subscription must be newly signed up if one wants to get it cheaper.
The discount applies basically only to new customers of a streamer.
You cannot extend an existing subscription at a cheaper price or resubscribe with your regular streamer to support them after the old subscription has expired.
Twitch accidentally makes promo campaign better than planned
That was the bug: Exactly this catch was buggy at first. The “Subtember” discount applied to any form of subscription. So it was also possible to extend an existing subscription at a reduced price.
On September 3rd, Twitch then said: That was a bug. The Subtember is only for “first subscribers” or if people with an “Amazon Prime” subscription want to switch to a paying model now.
Anyone who signed up for a subscription before the fix kept the discount – but now it only applied to new customers.
“Amazon only cares about money, not about the community on Twitch”
This is the problem: Some streamers find the new promotional campaign in its form useless. Because it assumes that someone is supporting a channel for the first time. But that is not the reality for many streamers. Because they have an existing audience and want their subscribers to renew their subscriptions or renew expired ones.
For streamers, the “buggy” version of “Subtember” was useful, but the new one is not. The new one is also cumbersome to explain, with the big catch that comes with it.
The site Kotaku quotes streamers who make it clear how stupid they find the “bug fix”:
- “This is now the most worthless Subtember of all time. The chance that someone who has never subscribed to my channel now takes a subscription for 3 or 6 months is extremely small.”
- “The Subtember is now almost useless. Streamers care about building a community in the long term. Why doesn’t Subtember support these types of viewers?”
Why? This Subtember is almost useless to us. Streamers are growing engaged, long-term communities and relationships. Why doesn’t Subtember support these types of viewers vs. solely new ones?
— ashnichrist (@ashnichrist) September 3, 2020
Theres such little benefit here. You could have done better.
- “Do you remember when Subtember was meant to support streamers financially rather than just bring more people into Amazon’s payment system?”
- “New subscriptions are great, but it’s my long-term supporters that make up most of my subscription income. It shows that it was never about streamers and the community; it was only about bringing fresh money to Amazon.”
Amazon is apparently trying to win new customers through Twitch
This is behind it: The Subtember is clearly a promotional campaign by Amazon to turn those who had given away a “Twitch Prime” subscription into paying customers. They want to bring new customers into the payment system. This is clearly the direction of this promotional campaign:
- Amazon sees gaming and Twitch as a way to reach a young audience. They make deals, for example with Fortnite, to attract new customers to Amazon Prime via Twitch Prime. That is the direction of almost all of their actions with Twitch.
- Amazon is not about letting existing customers pay less for something they already want to sign up for. Exactly these loyal customers are important for Twitch streamers.
This is a clear conflict of interest.
In fact, the “Subtember” had significantly better conditions in previous years. In 2017, the Subtember was also only for new customers who had not subscribed to a channel for more than 32 days, but there was a 50% discount on the first month.
By 2020, Twitch has grown significantly and the Subtember has gained a major sponsor in Capital One, but the terms are not optimal. Moreover, the “bug” gave streamers and viewers a taste of how the campaign could have run without the catch.
The big Amazon profit from 2018 is over for now
Streamers still benefited strongly from the partnership between Amazon and Twitch in 2018: Amazon poured a lot of money into streamers’ pockets with big deals and promotions. Collaborations with games like Fortnite attracted young gamers to Amazon Prime. As a result, many gamers received a “Twitch Prime” subscription for free, which they then gifted to their favorite streamer. The streamers then received their €2.50 for each subscription and there were apparently tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of subscriptions that newly came to Twitch.
This period and the influx of “fresh money” allowed many currently popular streamers to professionalize themselves. Especially the Twitch Prime deals around Fortnite brought a lot of money into the hands of Twitch streamers.
This can be seen, for example, in the case of Ninja, who really cashed in. This seems to have significantly decreased in 2020. The current promotions are not as lucrative for streamers as the promotions from two years ago. Although Amazon continues to pursue its business interests with Twitch, streamers can no longer benefit as they once did.
Another promotional campaign from Twitch is also currently launching. This also serves to promote Amazon’s “Amazon Prime” service through Twitch to reach a young audience. Streamers are supposed to watch series live on Twitch with their fans.
But even this campaign has a catch, as the German streamer MontanaBlack explains:
MontanaBlack explains why he doesn’t want to watch series on Twitch with you
