Introducing Shared Viewership: The Next Step in Making Collaborations Work Better on Twitch

Over the last year, we’ve been focused on improving collaborations on Twitch. The reasons are simple: collaborations are a lot of fun (for streamers and their communities) and they are one of the best ways to reach new audiences to grow your channel. Growth is clearly a major benefit, but collaborations are more than just the sum of their channels. They represent something entirely new that both streamers and their communities create and experience together. That’s one of the reasons we recently introduced Drop Ins and Shared Chat. These launches have brought us a step closer to our vision of communal collaboration.

What Shared Viewership Is

Now that communities can quickly and easily merge for a truly communal experience, we are taking an important step to make collaborations more co-op by introducing Shared Viewership. Shared Viewership combines view counts across collaborative channels, giving creators the ability to understand the total reach of their collaborations and the opportunity for that reach to impact their discoverability on Twitch. This is a big change, so we want to make sure we clearly explain our vision, describe the kinds of collaborations that will qualify for Shared Viewership, and outline our rationale for this update.

Why We’re Making This Change

At the core of this change is a principle: Viewership impacts the very nature of a stream. A stream with small viewership and a handful of chatters is fundamentally different from larger streams with hundreds or thousands of viewers. It’s a different experience for the viewers themselves, and a different experience for the creators leading the stream. This is especially true when two or more communities are present with multiple streamers, as they are in a Shared Chat collaboration. As a result of this dynamic, creators and viewers behave differently based on viewership, and this impacts the nature of the stream. Based on this principle, we believe Shared Viewership best represents the context a streamer is creating within and what a viewer can expect to experience when joining a collaborative stream.

For creators, the total viewership represents the full reach of the work you are co-creating. It allows you to understand the context and address the community that’s watching / interacting with you. The use of Shared Chat means this viewership number represents the community present and available to interact with your stream, reflecting the community you have access to at any given moment. For viewers, total viewership is an accurate representation of what to expect when joining a stream, and thus is a relevant factor when making decisions about what streams to watch and engage with.

Collaborations That Qualify for Shared Viewership

Our vision for collaboration on Twitch is a true co-op experience for streamers and their communities. That means streamers should experience minimal trade offs when streaming with someone else. They should be able to 1) engage with the full community watching and 2) gain the full benefits of the total reach the stream is generating.

This is a simple definition of what kinds of collaborations qualify for Shared Viewership: Two or more streamers present and creating something new together, while live at the same time, that their combined communities can engage with through chat. You must be creating a shared experience and you must be able to respond to chat.

These are the two requirements necessary to qualify for Shared Viewership:

• Collaborative streamers are sharing audio and/or video together. This implies they are present and creating something new together live at the same time.
• Shared Chat is enabled. This implies a context that combined communities can engage with and co-create within together.

How It Will Be Implemented

• New Metric - Shared Viewership will introduce a new metric for Twitch streamers that shows the total unique count of concurrent viewers across all channels collaborating.
• Discovery - This new metric will be displayed on all Twitch discovery surfaces and will impact stream position when sorting by viewership, because it is the truest representation of what a viewer can expect to experience when they decide to join a stream.
• Individual CCV Remains in Place - Viewers and streamers will be able to see both their total shared viewership and the individual viewership on each channel. Shared Viewership will have no impact on Path to Partner or the number of people who see ads on your channel.
• Analytics (Coming Soon) - New post-stream analytics representing Shared Viewership will be rolled out in the coming months, with an aim to help you understand the total reach and impact of your collaborations after each stream.

You can learn more about Shared Viewership and see examples of what does and does not qualify at our help article here.

FAQ

1. How do I enable Shared Viewership during my next Collaboration? Shared Viewership will automatically turn on for all channels in a Stream Together session with Shared Chat enabled.
2. Won’t people game the system? We understand the concern about potential misuse, which is why we are spending the time to clearly define the guidelines for what is permissible and restricting initial usage to both Stream Together and Shared Chat. We will be actively enforcing our policies to retain trust in the feature.
3. How will infractions be dealt with by Twitch? See appendix for full definition, however, on enforcement your first infraction will be a warning. On second offense users will receive a strike. We may move to a restriction approach in 2025 where infractions mean you can no longer use ST or SC for a period of time, negating your ability to have Shared Viewership.
4. Does this punish streamers who don’t collaborate regularly? No, this is us remedying a flaw in collaboration on Twitch. Streamers have told us that collaboration is important, but the current experience doesn’t feel truly co-op. Shared Viewership is designed to fix that problem by providing a more accurate representation of the collaborative experience - for both streamers and viewers.
5. What does Shared Viewership affect? Shared Viewership will impact you ability to be ranked higher in Discovery, as it is the best representation of what a viewer should expect to experience. It will also provide creators with enhanced analytics to understand the total reach of their collaborative efforts, which can be valuable for sponsorships and other opportunities.
6. Will it affect Path to Partner or Ad payouts? Shared Viewership will have no impact on Path to Partner or the number of people who see ads on your channel.
7. Why not shared monetization features? We believe there is significant value in better supporting the monetization of collaborative content, and we are actively exploring opportunities to do so in the near future. Our focus right now is on providing the foundational tools like Shared Viewership to enhance the overall collaborative experience on Twitch.
8. What about TOS risks from collaborators? We understand there are risks around safety when collaborating with others. The Stream Together feature helps mitigate those risks, as you are not responsible for your guests’ behavior. However, we encourage all creators to be mindful of their collaborators and report any TOS violations.