Twitch announced on Wednesday that it will implement a new policy limiting streamers to 100 hours of highlights and uploads. If a channel exceeds this limit, its content will be deleted. This change, effective from April 19, is being introduced because highlights have not proven effective in driving discovery or engagement, and the storage costs are considerable.
This new policy will affect highlights, which are edited snippets from a channel’s past broadcasts, as well as other uploaded content. Clips and video-on-demand (VOD) past broadcasts will remain unaffected. It is noted that past broadcasts are already automatically deleted after a certain period.
The company’s announcement coincides with a similar update from Facebook earlier in the week, which stated that live videos will be stored on its platform for only 30 days before being deleted. Facebook also plans to remove older past broadcasts in the coming months.
Twitch initially introduced highlights to help streamers create compilations of their best moments. However, the company now asserts that other features like Clips, Tags, and the Mobile Discovery Feed are more effective in fostering discovery and engagement.
In its blog post, Twitch explained that despite the low effectiveness of highlights, some users have amassed thousands of hours of Highlights and Uploads, often utilized for creating such highlight reels. The company states that the costs of storing this content are high. Instituting this 100-hour storage limit, which impacts less than 0.5% of active channels and less than 0.1% of hours watched, will allow for more efficient resource management, continued support for Highlights and Uploads, and further investment in developing more effective viewer engagement tools.
Following this announcement, some streamers expressed dissatisfaction on social media, highlighting that Twitch is owned by Amazon, a leading market player in cloud services through its AWS platform. Streamers with channels exceeding the 100-hour limit after the implementation date will have their highlights and uploads automatically deleted, starting with those with the fewest views. Twitch advises users to download or export their content before the deadline.
