When in doubt, ask your broadcasters

One measure of a platform’s relevance is how fiercely its users argue about what’s right or wrong in the community. By that measure, we’re fortunate to find ourselves excruciatingly relevant on the topic of “appropriate” game content. As a new group within Twitch, Developer Success can offer a fresh perspective on this.

First, we hold that games are art — uniquely personal expressions of alternate worldviews. We have exactly zero interest in telling game creators what content should/not be in your games.

Second, we strive to enable community members to find exactly the content you want, while avoiding content you don’t. That’s why our content reviews always start with a user report. If we fail at this, we’re out of business. It’s a hot, dusty road to perfection here; we are in it for the long haul, and are currently working on site features that will allow for responsible broadcasting and viewing of legitimate artistic depictions of nudity and violence.

Our Rules of Conduct, accompanied by new features such as Clips collections and updated Search, represent our ongoing efforts to balance those two points of view. Our general guidance to broadcasters is as follows:

• Games with a rating equivalent to the ESRB’s Mature or below are OK to broadcast.

• Occurrences of nudity, sex, or gratuitous violence in games that otherwise adhere to the above are OK, so long as you do not make them the focus of your content.

It follows, then, that our guidance to game creators is consistent with the theme we introduced earlier this year: engage your Twitch community during, not after, development of your game. You can trust your broadcasters to tell you whether your game helps them build their viewer community, or risks getting them banned.

Questions? Thoughts? Let’s take the conversation to dev.twitch.tv.