It appears that Twitch’s controversial “pay-to-win” boost feature has gone bankrupt. According to a data analyst who analyzed the numbers, there were no positive effects for streamers who took part in a test of the Boost feature.
Twitch announced the experimental boost option in October and was immediately met with skepticism. Boost would, for a surcharge, increase the likelihood that a streamer will be featured on the Twitch homepage, where it ideally gets more eyes, which would hopefully lead to more returning subscribers. Now we have data to show that those who thought the function was too good to be true may have been right.
Zach Bussey, an independent data analyst specializing in streaming, said in a video that he collected data from 125 streamers who participated in Twitch’s Boost test. And the results are the opposite of PogCham. Bussey told Kotaku he used data from another Twitch analyst SullyGnome.
In a table, Bussey compared the statistics of the total number of streamers’ followers, average concurrent viewers, and maximum viewers in November with their numbers as of October 2nd. According to Bussey, Twitch’s boost feature for small and even affiliate businesses didn’t bring significant growth to streamers who signed up for the program, which appears to make up the bulk of the beta pool.
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According to his data, the overall change in concurrent views was mixed: 48 streamers saw fewer concurrent views and 51 gained concurrent views. Another 18 saw no change and seven did not stream during the month that Bussey was recording his data.
“Regarding my data, there was no conclusive evidence that Boost had any effect on their streams,” Bussey said in the video. “It’s almost like it didn’t happen.”
While concurrent channel views can be tricky, Bussey said a streamer’s page views are the best measure of growth. According to his data, 60 percent of boosted streamers saw fewer page views in November than in October.
Bussey specifically compared positive audience results with negative ones. The average “positive” result, based on simultaneous views, number of followers, peak views and hours streamed, was just under 50 percent for the 125 streamers who took part in the boost test, which corresponds to about half of the average streamer in the main test. Statistics improved.
In the video, Bussey said he did not know how to find a positive influence of Twitch’s Boost function especially for smaller streamers, although he had tried different ways to interpret his data.
Bussey told Kotaku the results of his data didn’t surprise him, but he went on to postulate that the monetization aspect of Twitch’s boost experiment would benefit Twitch’s bottom line more than the little streamers who supposedly would help. The Boost option, for example, offers a new way to monetize the service, in addition to the traditional model where viewers donate directly to a streamer, which Twitch would then take a percentage of.
Bussey hypothesized that the boost feature might tell Twitch how much viewers are willing to spend to endorse a streamer and whether they are giving away a streamer they like rather than giving away subscriptions.
What smaller Twitch streamers can do to attract an audience, Bussey suggested that streamers branch out and create content on YouTube and TikTok that draws new viewers to their Twitch accounts.
“Findability of live content is a really hard question to answer,” said Bussey. “I don’t think Twitch will be developing an ingenious system anytime soon.”
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