One of the biggest questions facing Twitch has to do with how streamers on the platform can make money. The platform has been attempting to come up with various solutions to the problem and it has managed to come up with several options including tips, game sales and so on and so forth. The company is now expanding game sales to the Twitch affiliate program.
This expansion essentially enhances the scope of the program to include more members who have the potential to benefit from the sale of games. The affiliate program in case you don’t remember, was introduces last month and sought to provide streamers below the prestigious rank of partners, with a way to make bucks from their streaming efforts. Under the program, tipping with bits was available to folks watching the streams and Twitch had promised to make more tools available as soon as possible.
The company is holding true to its promise and has now introduced the option to sell games, which was previously limited to partners, to affiliates as well. So basically, people who are streaming a particular game ill also be able to showcase and thus sell the titles they are streaming. And when someone buys it, bingo! Everyone gets a cut.
Around 70 percent of the cost goes to the game publishers while Twitch keeps around 25 percent. And the streamers themselves get to keep around 5 percent or so as well. When you consider streamers with followers in the hundreds of thousands, this is a pretty little golden nest just waiting to happen. Specially since the people watching the streams are all likely to be very interested in the games — as such, there is a good chance that they would be willing to shell out some money to purchase the title as well.
Meanwhile, this also propels Twitch into a sort of online retailer for games. Instead of other platforms, users could well prefer to watch the game in action and then directly purchase them. At present, Twitch is offering around 100 titles available for sale from various game publishers including Ubisoft’s For Honor and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands; Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead and Minecraft: Story Mode; Hi-Rez Studios’ SMITE and Paladins; Paradox Interactive’s Tyranny; Trion Worlds’ Atlas Reactor; Double Fine Productions’ Broken Age and Psychonauts and so on.
This opens the door for tens of thousands of affiliates to make themselves some money, and Twitch more of it. Let’s see how it turns out.
