One of the most popular Twitch streamers and YouTube personality Charles 'MoistCr1TiKal' White has released a video critiquing Twitch's recent trial feature, Elevated Chats. Twitch added recently a new Elevated Chat feature, which copies the functionality of YouTube's Super Chat to the platform. According to White, the new feature is one more bad decision in a continuous line of blunders from the streaming giant.
White has become a staunch critic of Twitch's policies, which according to him are bringing the potentially great platform down to its knees. The newest addition that gets his brutally honest treatment is Elevated Chat, which allows users to pay for pinned messages. Although Twitch might want to declutter the chat with the new feature, there have already been features in place to pin chats. Viewers have been able to use channel points and bits to separate their messages from others. In addition, Twitch recently added a possibility for creators and moderators to pin messages.
The introduction of paid chat messages comes after Twitch incentivized the increase of ads on streams and reduced creator shares. According to White, Twitch has been desperately trying to find new revenue streams to make the venture more profitable. He doesn't seem to object to paid chats when the feature is implemented well, like, according to him, is the case on YouTube. However, on Twitch the pinned chats will appear either above other chat messages or below the stream. The latter option is problematic in White's view.
The placement seems to irritate White more than any other aspect of the feature. Not only the Twitch viewers might miss the message, but even the streamers aren't seeing it, unless in a specific viewing mode. White calls this "paying money to be ignored." Elevated Chats don't come cheap either, as Twitch charges viewers $5 for a 30-second time slot. However, if a viewer wants a longer time slot, it will cost up to a whopping $100. The first five and ten-minute slots have the same per-minute pricing, but after that, the pricing goes way up for seemingly no good reason.
The feature is on by default for streamers and cannot be opted out of. There also seems to be no way to affect whether the pinned chat message will appear on top of the chat or below the stream. Twitch calls Elevated Chat an experiment, so plenty can change before it's implemented as a finished feature. As Twitch is losing streamers and viewers to other platforms, it could prove to be a saving grace if implemented right. Streamers and viewers alike haven't been fans of the ad increases, and giving streamers and Twitch another way to monetize could alleviate pressure to show so many ads. Still, in its current form, content creators like White do not seem satisfied.