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itmeJP Community

Rant about Twitch adds and Turbo

Dropped Frames
#1

In the two latest dropped frames it’s been talked about twitch adds and ad blockers, and in the recent episode they talked about twitch’s new add delivery system.
The consensus seems to be that nobody likes adds but they are necessary and, hey you’ve got Twitch prime.
Prime is indeed an amazing deal if you already have a twitch subscription or were a Turbo subscriber, if you already had turbo you essentially get an Amazon Prime subscription and a Twitch sub by paying 2$ more.

Back to ads and their blockers, i support and understand twitch’s decision to create a delivery system that circumvents add blockers. Now i don’t like adds and i do use ad block, and to some extent i do feel guilty for using it. Hosting anything on the internet costs money (live stream’s i would guess are about as expensive as it gets) and both twitch staff and creators deserve to get payed. That is why i subscribe to several streamers and used to pay for Turbo.

Used to, Turbo has never been an amazing deal but i happily paid it to support the streamers i did not subscribe too, and Twitch. But with the introduction of Twitch Prime i immediately cancelled my Turbo subscription, swearing never to buy it in it’s current form ever again.

Twitch Prime marked the death of Turbo, turning it into a 8.99$ chat badge for Prime users. As i mentioned at the start, prime is an amazing deal if you were a Turbo sub. It would be downright silly to not get Prime if you wanted a legit form of add free twitch.
Prime is indeed a very good answer to people who complain about adds on twitch, seeing ass twitch is not the worst when it comes to adds(most of the time). Though many streamers probably should start to think more about add timings with the new system.
To summarize, the new add system is not the end of twitch, there is a fair way to pay for no adds and streamers will adapt the add frequency.

So, why the rant? I cant get Prime… I’m not the only one either, by pulling numbers out off my ass I estimate that 1/3 of Twitch users are in the same boat as me. We cant get Prime because it is not available in our countries, seeing as Prime is tied to Amazon Prime. (why this is terrible is for another rant)
Why is this a problem? We still got Turbo to pay for an add less Twitch.

Because Turbo is the opposite of Prime, it is a terrible deal.
The only value off Turbo is having no adds while supporting streamers. Yes, you do get some emotes and a badge but i think it’s safe to say that the only reason someone would buy turbo is for the removal off adds.
To make it clear why Turbo is terrible you have to look at Twitch Prime, I’m only going to care about the direct benefits on Twitch, as Twitch has no say over Amazon Prime.
Twitch Prime is FREE, seeing as you can only get it trough Amazon Prime which will cost you 10.99$ a month (less if you are a student). So lets use 10.99$ as the price for Twitch Prime.
For that 10.99$ you get everything included in Turbo, except the turbo chat badge, but you do get a Prime badge in addition you get 1 free sub to any twitch partner of your liking per month.
It is the free sub which makes Twitch Prime amazing even if you never use Amazon Prime, as a sub is 4.99$.

This means that if you already were subbed on Twitch you essentially pay 6$ for “Turbo” if you decide to get Prime, or vice versa. Contrast this to 8.99$ for Turbo and 4.99$ for a subscription if Prime is not available, making it 2.99$ more expensive too get Twitch add free + a subscription.
That is why i don’t feel it is to entitled to be mad about twitch’s new add delivery system, remembering that twitch also takes a hefty cut from your subscriptions (and bits).
To get twitch add free I have to pay twitch 8.99$ on top of the 2.49$ they take from my subscription to a streamer (I am not sure about the split, but i believe it is 50/50 for most).
As of today i am subscribed to 3 streamers, meaning i already pay twitch 7.99$ a month, for a total of 14.99$ spent on twitch every month. If i have to buy turbo to get Twitch add free i would drop 2 of my subscriptions leaving me with 13.99$ spent on twitch every month, with 11.49$ going to twitch and 2.49% too a streamer.

In my opinion this is a giant fuck you too Twitch users that cant get Twitch prime, and potentially devastating too channels with an audience consisting mostly of such users (f.ex channels catering to Scandinavian users). This would also effect most streamers, but to a lesser extent.
Even if the number taken from my ass are completely unreliable and the number of users unable to get Prime is as low as 1/5 or even 1/10. Making 10-20% of users having to chose between add free twitch or more subscriptions could lead to a significant drop of total subscriptions.

Twitch could and should do something about this. I would suggest Giving Turbo users a Free subscription to any channel as well. Even if they were to raise the price to 9.99$ or even 10.99$ it would still be a better deal than the current form of turbo. They could even sell Turbo for 6.99$ (without the free subscription) and creating a second tier for 10.99$ giving you Turbo and a “free” Subscription. That second Tier could even be called something like Twitch Prime. This would give everyone a chance to get Twitch add free for a reasonable price while arguably making Amazon Prime seem like a better deal, as it would give a free Twitch Prime + all the extra goodies.

That turned out a lot longer than i had intended and if your still reading this i must apologize for my poor writing and rambling.

TLDR: Adds are bad, Addblock is worse and Turbo is the worst. Lower the price of turbo or/and raise the price and give it a “free” subscription.

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#2

Amazon Prime is $99 a year, which breaks down to $8.25 a month, making it cheaper then Turbo not more expensive. Yes it does suck that more countries don’t have Prime, but I guess there are legal restriction that they are trying to get around.

#3

I feel like we shouldn’t jump the gun on this topic because like they said on Dropped Frames today we don’t know anything about this new system until Twitch decides to inform streamers and viewers.

Until we get more information I think you should refrain from assuming the worst.

#4

Yeah, making sure Amazon Prime has the same features everywhere provides some major legal and logistical challenges.
So i hope twitch makes some major changes to Turbo to make it a better deal. They don’t have to make as good of a deal as Prime, having it give the same benefits to Twitch at a couple of dollars higher price point would go a long way.

#5

True, but turbo is still a terrible product and even if adds do get blocked I would much rather pay a reasonable price for Turbo.

#6

as soon as I heard about the new features with Amazon Prime I connected it to Twitch and dropped Turbo, I just was correcting your mistake about the cost of Prime

#7

I’m from Sweden were we don’t have prime and I agree full heartedly. I don’t run ad block but I have no intention of every buying Turbo as the product is way to over-priced and gives the user nothing of value.

I would love the be able to get Twitch Prime, if I could I would gladly pay for it every month without hesitation.

As a twitch user from a non-prime country I feel very much left out and these are the kinds of things that will create bad will towards Twitch in both the long and short run. For me Twitch Prime is also a good way to show that Twitch has lost some of the connection to the users, but maybe that’s what happens when you have no real competitor and the money keeps coming in. If they would have taken 1 sec to thing about Twitch Prime and the users in non-prime country they would have gone back to the drawing board and re-worked the setup not just giving us the option to keep on buying Turbo…

#8

Tbh, i never have seen Turbo as something that had enough value. To compare it to Youtube Red and Amazon Prime for getting past the adds is to compare a turd to a fine meal. You can eat whatever you want, but the problem comes when the turd is the only thing you can get.

One of the problems of Turbo might be that it’s tied to Twitch instead of Amazon. Due this it might not be possible to toss in the extra things that Amazon is funding on the Prime side of things.

My suggestion would be that they would add in a free sub to Turbo. The amount of Turbo accounts must have dropped a lot anyway so the revenue from it isn’t what it has used to be. Essentially this would make Turbo cost a lot less for someone who is subscribing for at least one caster but it would still be the same cost for for someone who wants only get the free adds. I don’t think they would want to add 2-3$ version of the free adds just because smaller transactions is where you lose the most in to transaction fees. Also Twitch rakes in good with the sub part too.

A bit less cool thing would be to get Bits. It wouldn’t be as cool for me and it would pretty much make the same loss for Twitch than the amount they pay from the sub to a caster. shrug

#9

I hate advertisements. I have prime and sub to a few channels besides but I remember the pain of not having funds available for this kind of stuff. If Twitch were to force me to view ads I would stop watching Twitch.

#10

I dont have to care since I have prime, but if they really force people to watch ads mid stream I feel they risk alienating a substantial number of viewers

I know I would definitely stop watching most content I now leave running on the side while playing games, if they did

while I agree that ad blocking is problematic and acknowledge that there must be some form of revenue for content creators, I have a feeling that a lot of people wont be very happy if twitch turns to more aggressive advertising strategies

#12

It’s priced differently in different countries. For example, as a student in Germany I’m paying 24€ (~$26,6) a year for Prime.

#13

so still cheaper then $8.99 a month, yes?

#14

My thoughts sums down to:

Do I want ads? No

What options do I have? Turbo or Adblock, other people also have a better option, Amazon Prime.

Would I prefer Amazon Prime? Yes. But I cant get it. Not because Twitch says so, but because of business policies across regions.

Twitch is an american company and I live in Sweden, I understand that the same rules cant apply across regions as many other services and products in the world.

I will and CAN only use what options are available to me and its not Twitch that decides who gets what, im glad that some people has a sweet deal. Im not upset.

I use turbo to benefit streamers who runs ads, I often have serveral streams up just for this cause.

TL/DR:

I want Prime but I cant get it so I still use Turbo to benefit the streamers while not having to watch the ads. I dont blame anyone, its strictly business policies that makes it unfair.

#15

Would you pay for Twitch Prime if it didn’t come with all of the Amazon Prime benefits that they can’t bring over here in Sweden (at the moment)?

#16

I’m not 100% certain what Twitch Prime would give me compared to Turbo.

But if Prime would cost the same, get rid of ads for all streams(even those i’m not subbed to) although they still get revenue, AND a free subscription to any streamer I want. I’d want Prime over Turbo for sure, anything else that comes with the package isnt really interesting to me.

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