Twitch's senior vice president of global creators announced that she is leaving the company on the same day that the platform revealed plans to restructure how it pays its top streamers. For the higher profile streamers who have come to rely on Twitch as a primary source of income, the change will result in a substantial hit to their revenue.
Twitch recently announced its controversial revenue split change earlier this week in a move that will strongly impact the incomes of the platform's most successful streamers. Until now, top performers enjoyed deals that offered a favorable 70/30 revenue split for subscriptions. The change will now have streamers sharing 70/30 up until a $100,000 threshold where it will drop to a 50/50 split. As this change only affects the overwhelming minority of streamers who make $100,000 or more on subscriptions it isn't a huge problem for most content creators, but the change may cause an exodus of celebrity streamers seeking better deals on other platforms.
Constance Knight announced in a letter to employees that she is embarking on a "new adventure that provides exciting growth opportunities for me both professionally and personally," apparently shifting into another position "in the creator space." Knight has had an impressive career in the content creator industry, having previously held high-level positions at both Instagram and Youtube. Although it's not certain if the change in Twitch's payment of streamers is to blame for her departure, the timing of this decision is suspect.
Knight isn't the first top-level Twitch executive to leave the company this year, either. The platform's chief content officer and its chief operating officer both left earlier in the year, with neither position being filled since then. The platform has apparently been struggling with strategy and leadership, losing touch with the content creators who make the platform possible. Questionable decisions such as pushing for in-stream advertising placements that hurt the live-viewing experience along with taking more money from top-performing streamers seem to indicate that the platform is struggling to find ways to increase revenue.
Amazon's live streaming platform has been having a tough time recently, cracking down on a series of gambling streams along with the troubling discovery of over 2,000 child predators found on Twitch. The platform has seen a wave of criticism from major content creators like Dr. Disrespect regarding the announced revenue change, and with top executives jumping ship, it's going to take a major shift to pull the platform out of this rut.
Source: Bloomberg