TwitchCon Day 1: All the News from the Opening Ceremony

Today in San Diego, we did something new to celebrate the start of TwitchCon: the first-ever TwitchCon Opening Ceremony. During the festivities, our CEO Emmett Shear sat down with Ezekiel_III to talk about the community’s accomplishments, answer questions, and unveil new features designed to support streamers and viewers.

We also announced the TwitchCon dates for next year!

TwitchCon Amsterdam: May 2-3, 2020

TwitchCon San Diego: September 25-27, 2020

Here’s a rundown of everything else that was announced today.

Grow

We want every part of Twitch to help talented creators get discovered by new viewers who we know will love their content.

• Twitch Studio: Twitch Studio makes it easier for new creators to get started with guided setup, easy-to-use templates for customization, and built-in activity feed, chat, and alerts so they can connect with their audience while they stream. We began testing Twitch Studio earlier this year, and it will be open to all streamers in November. Want to be notified when it’s available? Sign up here.

• Creator Dashboard: We’re completely revamping the streamer experience with an all-new, customizable web dashboard. Streamers can now easily access and customize a set of Quick Actions. For newer streamers, the included assistant suggests tips to help them level up their streams. You can check out the new dashboard in October!

• Channel Page: We’re redesigning the channel page to enhance the viewer experience and give streamers more ways to express themselves. We shared an early preview at TwitchCon and this will begin rolling out later next year. The new channel page will include the ability to create a channel trailer, publish stream schedules, and provide more detail to help new viewers get to know you and your channel.

Connect

Community is what makes Twitch so much different than anywhere else online. We want to give everyone more creative ways to connect.

• Channel Points: A customizable, channel-specific program for Affiliates and Partners that rewards loyal members of their community is coming January 2020. Viewers earn points for things they’re already doing and can redeem them for rewards like unlocking Tier 1 emotes, highlighting a message, or rewards customized by the streamer. We are currently testing with a handful of Streamers; you can go here to register if you’re interested in trying it out before it rolls out to everyone.

• Mod View: We’re introducing Mod View a new, customizable channel mode to help Mods do their job more easily. It includes all of the tools Mods use today, and new ones that allow them to quickly take action on messages flagged by AutoMod, see which mods are online, and includes a log of all moderation actions on the channel. We’ll begin rolling this out next spring.

Thrive

Streaming is hard work that requires commitment and talent. We want everyone to have more and better ways to get rewarded for that hard work.

•  Subscriptions on iOS: Starting in October, viewers on the Twitch iOS app will now be able to subscribe to their favorite streamers. iOS viewers will be able to purchase individual or bundled tokens that they can redeem for a Tier 1 subscription to the channel of their choice for up to 12 months. Subscribers will receive all of the same benefits, like custom emotes and access to sub-only content, and streamers earn the same revenue.

• Ads Experience Updates: We’re introducing a series of updates to improve the Ads experience for viewers and streamers. Starting in the next two weeks: 
  • Affiliates will earn a revenue share from ads. We’re also removing video ads from non-Affiliate and non-Partner channels so every video ad you see on a streamer’s channel supports that channel. 
  • Affiliates and Partners can disable pre-roll ads on their channel by running regular Ad Breaks. We’re also introducing picture-by-picture viewing on all gaming categories so that viewers don’t miss any action on the stream while an ad plays. 
  • We’ve also cleaned up quality-of-life experiences, like normalizing the volume of ads with other content.

This is just the beginning of ongoing improvements to the Ads experience. Starting later this year, we'll show an estimated payout for ad breaks so streamers know what they may earn before they run them.