Available Today: A New Version of Drops
Since we launched Drops in 2017, we’ve continued to improve upon it, giving game developers new ways for streamers and viewers to interact with games being played on Twitch. Today, we’re excited to bring game developers a new version of Drops – with an improved viewer experience, new publisher self-service dashboard, and more. We’ve been listening to your feedback, adding features that you’ve requested while giving you more control to create campaigns that are most suited to your game and its goals.
The new Drops services has been rebuilt from the ground up, giving you access to many new enhancements including the following.
Self-service campaign dashboard
Today we’re launching an entirely new self-service campaign dashboard for managing Drops. It is a central place where game developers can easily create, configure, launch, and monitor Drops campaigns. We’ve heard that it can be difficult to create and manage campaigns. Now, once the initial integration is complete, anyone on the game developer team can create a Drops campaign, making the ability to create and track campaigns more accessible to all members of a game developer’s team.
Events-based rules
Use the Enhanced Experiences API (E2) to create viewer Drops tied to streamer in-game accomplishments and events. With this integration, game developers will have the ability to write the rules that trigger a rewards Drop in a channel. For example, you can grant a Drop if a viewer sees a streamer complete a level or defeat a character in a game.
Please note that our Enhanced Experiences API is still in limited access. We are evaluating opening this functionality up to more developers in the future.
Time-based rules
Game developers can reward active viewership by setting a predetermined number of minutes and granting Drops to viewers who watch a channel for that amount of time. Twitch will track a user’s progress towards the goal and viewers will be able to see their progress towards the goal. Developers can also create tiered campaigns, where viewers need to claim smaller rewards to progress towards a final reward. Time-based rules will be available to all game developers using the new Drops.
Drops home for viewers
We’ve made it easier for viewers to earn more Drops on the improved viewer home for Drops. From here, viewers can learn about a campaign they’re participating in, its rewards, their progress, and rules. They can also see all active Drops campaigns on Twitch to find other campaigns to participate in. In addition to the new home, we’ve made it easier for viewers to find Drops across Twitch, with auto tagging, improved search, and more.
With all the new features and improvements in this new version of Drops, we now consider the existing version a legacy product that we will no longer support after February 21, 2021. If you have a legacy Drops integration, you will still be able to create and run campaigns until then. For information on the old version of Drops, please visit the legacy Drops developer guide.
To start building your first Drops campaign with these new features, please visit the Drops developer guide. If you have questions or feedback, please provide your comments on the developer forum announcement.
This is just the beginning of what we have planned for Drops. We’ve built this new version of Drops in a way that allows us to build upon it. We’ll be rolling out regular updates to this version to add new features, improve the creator and viewer dashboards, and enhance performance. To stay up to date on what’s coming next, follow @TwitchDev on Twitter.
Update (2020-12-18): The sunset date for legacy Drops campaigns has been extended and reflected above.