"Stop taking half of my income": Community divided as Twitch announces sponsorship experiments, including Sponsored Gift Sub and Sub Discounts

sportskeeda.com:

Twitch has announced that it will conduct various "sponsorship experiments" in the coming weeks as it tries to integrate sponsored content into streams in various ways.

The Twitch Support Twitter handle posted a long thread listing all the new features slated to be tested out in a bid to "fuel streamer earnings." These features include Sponsored Gift Subs, which will allow brands to gift subscriptions to viewers in Chat.

However, the thread has elicited a plethora of negative reactions from the community, as many criticized the subscription-based features due to the controversial 50/50 revenue split.

Some Twitter users even accused the Amazon-owned streaming platform of trying to find new ways to increase the cut from their creators' pay:

The recent CEO shuffle at Twitch was a point of interest in the streaming community. Some hoped for a change in the platform's recent policies, which are unpopular among streamers and viewers. However, Dan Clancy has maintained a pro 50/50 subscription split stance since stepping up to the CEO role a few weeks ago.

Coming to the sponsorship experiments, the overwhelming majority of reactions under the Twitch Support Twitter thread are negative. Many see these experiments as an attempt to barge into the streamers' sponsorship contracts.

Steven Spohn, a partnered streamer on the platform, wrote:

For context, let's take a brief look at the features proposed by the purple platform.

Here are all the features coming to Twitch as part of its sponsorship experiments, per the platform's official blog:

Note: These experiments have nothing to do with the Bounty Board (until the testing period is over).

A cursory look at the first three new features on the list above shows that Twitch is trying to