Twitch announces Twitch Prime, Loyalty Badges, and video uploads

Twitch, the video game live streaming service acquired by Amazon for nearly a billion dollars back in 2014, kicked off its annual TwitchCon conference this afternoon with a keynote. With keynotes generally come a bit of news… and sure enough, here’s whats new:

• Twitch Prime: As we scooped right before the Keynote, Twitch officially confirmed TwitchPrime. Included for free for Amazon Prime subscribers, it’ll include “free loot” (like in-game skins, characters, and more), ad-free viewing, one free channel subscription each month (streamers will still get paid for these subscriptions), discounts on new release games, and free release-day delivery on games.
• Clips on Mobile: viewers will be able to clip/create/share clips from Twitch streams on iOS/Android beginning immediately. Meanwhile, clips will get more precise by way of a new clip trimming feature coming in mid-October.
• Uploads: Up until now, the only stuff you could host on your channel is live content or previously-live stuff you’d streamed through Twitch. Beginning today, you’ll be able to upload your own gaming videos to Twitch.





• Loyalty badges: Streamers will be able to award special “tenure”-based badges to long-term viewers who’ve been tuning in for 3, 6, 12, or 24 months. Streamers can design their own badges; the feature will launch in 3 weeks.
• Transcodes: Twitch is opening up transcoding — that is, video quality options for viewers — to more streamers. It’s currently offered primarily to revenue sharing partners, but they hope to open it to 3x as many non-partners within the next few months.
• HTML5 Support: after a few months in beta, Twitch announced that HTML5 support is rolling out to everyone today.

The first TwitchPrime “loot” bonus: TwitchPrime members will get access to Tyrande, from Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm, as a new hero in Blizzard’s Hearthstone.

Twitch also dropped a bunch of numbers, for those keeping track: Twitch had an average of 622,347 concurrent viewers in 2016, peaking at 2,061,718 viewers at once in April. 2 million people streamed games in 2016, with 17,208 being partnered (that is, in a revenue share agreement by roll of mid-roll ads and subscriptions) with Twitch. Overall, those 2 million streamers broadcasted over 10 billion minutes of game content.