The biggest headlines for Twitch this year have been focused on the past. Last month, high-profile streamer Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beahm admitted he was permanently banned from Twitch in 2020 after exchanging “messages with an individual minor back in 2017”. Following reports, a former Twitch employee stated Beahm continued to send sexually explicit messages even after the minor’s age was known. His admission was somewhat prompted by his removal from his own development studio.
It’s a shocking story and one Twitch seems keen to distance itself from. When I asked specifically for comment on the Dr. Disrespect story, I received a flat “no comment”. That’s not surprising: Twitch never comments on specific streamer cases and is instead focused on its platform.
However, Twitch did follow up to emphasise the importance of safety on the platform. “Harassment has no place on Twitch, and we take enforcement of our harassment and hateful conduct policies seriously,” a spokesperson told me, before detailing a number of features used to promote safety including Automod, Shield Mode, and follower verification. “These tools, in addition to our ongoing, 24/7 content moderation, help prevent harassment on Twitch. We continue to build on this work.”
At the subsequent TwitchCon Europe 2024 event held in Rotterdam, the mood was decidedly more positive, with Twitch understandably keen to instead look ahead at Twitch’s future.
But what exactly is Twitch’s future? In January, in the wake of layoffs, CEO Dan Clancy acknowledged that Twitch wasn’t profitable, leading to concern among some streamers about the longevity of the Amazon-owned streaming platform.
I spoke to both VP of product Jeremy Forrester and VP of global partnerships Pontus Eskilsson at TwitchCon, who reassured me that Twitch isn’t going anywhere. For both execs, the key word was sustainability.
“We definitely are intending to be around for many years,” said Forrester. “Obviously the biggest action that we took was the layoffs… to try and put Twitch in a position to be sustainable for the long run. We want to be in a position where we can continue supporting creators for the longest time.”
“We’re constantly evolving,” said Eskilsson. “We had a difficult start of the year, but since then we’ve kept iterating, we’ve launched more things that have helped more streamers grow and make more money.
“We keep putting up things that we believe are going to be net good for the community and we’re doing so in a sustainable way. That’s really the key here: making sure that sustainability for us in the long run is top of mind and the intent for us is to be here 40 years from now.”
While neither VP works directly in the safety team, it’s still an important facet of their jobs – considering both streamers and viewers.
“[Safety] usually comes into the process very near the start, so when we’re building new products we work very closely with our safety team,” explained Forrester. He mentions products like Stream Together and its new drop-in feature revealed at the convention’s opening ceremony, where streamers are given control over specific mechanisms to ensure their safety. The recent Discovery filters around content classification labels are also a way for viewers to safely control content.
“It’s a very tight collaboration between the two teams,” added Forrester, “because we don’t want to learn something that then ends up being used as a form of abuse. That’s the worst feeling.”
Said Eskilsson: “Streamer safety is top of mind for me. It’s important for us that we run an inclusive website… Everybody’s wellbeing on Twitch is definitely a key area for us and we’ve invested a lot in safety features to give to moderators and to streamers. That’s something we’re going to keep doing for the foreseeable future, because it’s an ever-evolving work stream.”
During the opening ceremony, Clancy revealed the platform’s new mission statement: “Create belonging by enabling streamers to build community”. This is how Twitch will operate and a major element of that is listening to feedback from streamers to improve the relationship between platform and users.