The streaming service Twitch has launched a controversial new feature live, but quickly removed it. Viewers can spend money on the latest idea to showcase content from their favorite streamer to other viewers, making them ‘bigger.’ The feature was already controversial as ‘Pay2Win.’ Now it turns out that it is also far too easy to abuse.
What is this feature?
- The feature is called ‘Boost’: The idea back in December 2020 was that viewers could earn special points through challenges to unlock rewards: as a reward, they could ‘boost’ a streamer’s channel. Then the channel was promoted, recommended to more people, and displayed on their homepage.
- In September 2021, the idea returned, but much more brutally: viewers could now simply spend money to promote their favorite channels. Streamers could also ‘run ads.’ The feature was immediately heavily criticized and had to be shut down after initial tests in December 2021.
- At the beginning of March 2022, Twitch made a new attempt to establish a similar feature: ‘Boost Train,’ but that also failed again.
Controversial feature criticized as ‘Pay2Win’
What was the criticism of the previous ‘Boosts’? The criticism is ‘this only benefits the rich and big ones:’
- Few people watch small streamers – so there will be fewer viewers who can spend money to promote the channels
- Small streamers also hardly make money on Twitch – they can therefore hardly pay for advertising out of their own pockets
- Large streamers have a lot of viewers and hardcore fans – so there are many who could potentially spend money to make their favorite ‘even bigger’
- Large streamers also have a lot of money themselves – for them, it could be appealing to invest money in the system to continue growing. For ‘purists,’ this would probably be a form of ‘cheating,’ distorting ‘natural competition’
Ultimately, such a boost serves mainly to make the ‘big streamer’ even bigger – while small streamers become even more ‘invisible’ on Twitch. In the eyes of many, this was a pure ‘Pay2Win’ scheme that Twitch wanted to use to encourage people to spend more money. The platform had made it worse.
What went wrong this time? The new feature ‘Boost Train’ was supposed to promote a channel when viewers donated subscriptions or used the currency Bits to unlock rewards.
It went quite well for a while until a user noticed that naked breasts of women were being shown on their homepage.
Apparently, someone had gone live with a channel showing porn on Twitch and used the ‘Boost Train’ to display the channel to as many people as possible. Zach Bussey explains this (cover photo, via twitter).
Feature exploited or deliberately sabotaged in protest
What is the problem? Normally, when someone goes live with such ‘porn channels,’ they are found and deleted relatively quickly by Twitch moderation before they can cause much damage. Channels take a while to grow on Twitch: even fraudulent channels.
However, if this growth is accelerated with the fertilizer of ‘money,’ it is a problem.
There is also suspicion that trolls are deliberately running such advertising “in protest” against the Pay2Win feature to show Twitch what a ridiculous idea this is.
This is how Twitch reacts: They have temporarily deactivated the feature. Oops.
This is not the first brilliant idea from Twitch that has been ruined by porn:
Twitch chief apologizes for promoting porn on Ninja’s channel
