Twitch Introduces New Elevated Chat Feature
For big streamers with thousands of their fans in the chat all at once, it was almost impossible for them to read one particular message unless it was by pure chance. Now, Twitch is making it possible for those streamers to see pinned messages with a feature already implemented by YouTube, and it could cost fans a lot of money to have their messages read.
The streaming platform announced this week that there’s an experiment in progress called “Elevated Chat.” As part of the Elevated Chat feature, viewers are able to make a one-time payment to have their messages pinned to the top of the chat. This will grant viewers more exposure to the streamer, as well as the other members of the chat. Using Elevated Chat won’t come cheap, though.
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To have a message pinned for just 30 seconds, Twitch viewers will have to spend $5 and the rates raise almost exponentially from there. For 60 seconds it costs viewers $10, then $25 for 90 seconds, $50 for two minutes, and then the premier option is a whopping $100 for two and a half minutes. If more than one viewer is using the Elevated Chat feature, there’s a queue so that all paid-for messages get their time in the spotlight.
The Elevated Chat feature didn’t roll out to every streamer. Instead, Twitch is still in the experimental phase and is using Elevated Chat on a limited-time basis and with a limited number of streamers. The experiment is four weeks in total, starting with the end of September (or Subtember as Twitch likes to call it). During this trial run, streamers aren’t able to opt either in or out of the experiment.
Twitch also announced that streamers would receive 70 percent of the revenue created by Elevated Chat messages while the platform keeps the
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