Do Twitch streamers have a road to unionization?

Twitch had an extremely turbulent couple of weeks. Twitch faced serious scrutiny regarding its gambling policies. Twitch made it clear that October would see the end of some forms of gambling. A Bloomberg Report revealed child sexual abuse on Twitch later that week. Twitch also made a controversial change in the amount of streamers it pays. The collision of all these problems at once reached a fever pitch — and had some streamers asking, Are we really able to unite?

With regard to the revenue split, The Verge reported that larger and smaller content creators alike see it as “anti-creator.” Twitch currently offers a 70/30 revenue split to its top streamers, and others have long asked for the platform to spread that to all streamers rather than the 50/50 split it currently offers them. Instead, Twitch is actually moving away from that split, bringing all streamers down to a 50/50 split after they’ve reached $100,000 in revenue.

It is a fact that streamers are already organizing. Though streamers likely can’t unionize in the legal sense like workers at a company or factory might, they are nonetheless able to work together and even use collective action to encourage Twitch to make changes.

Twitch streamers are well aware of the collective power that they have over their platform. While streamers You can find it heren’t ever actually organized themselves into an unofficial union or guild, they haveThey came together and pushed for platform change. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

Before Twitch’s top streamers called on the Amazon-owned company to ban slots and gambling on the platform — led by a hashtag and a proposed boycott — a number of streamers had done the same for other causes. In 2021, Twitch users rallied behind the #TwitchDoBetter hashtag in response to the platform’s alleged inaction to curb “hate raids” (targeted attacks on marginalized streamers). In 2020, streamers took part in a one-day blackout to protest sexual harassment allegations against members of the community.

Twitch responded with statements of support and policy modifications in response to the two movements.

Twitch’s marginalized streamers often lead movements for social change. “I don’t get to opt out of being Black, Femme, Queer, and my life is politicized whether I want it to [be] or not,” said partnered Twitch streamer and tabletop RPG developer Tanya DePass, known as cypheroftyr online, to Polygon.

Twitch streamers have many difficulties unifying their collective voices. There’s a vast gulf in how much they make, how much they stream, and their official Twitch “status” — whether someone is an affiliate, partnered, one of the highest earners, or none of these at all. There are more than 2 million “active broadcasters,” Twitch said on its FAQ page, 27,000 of whom are partnered as of 2018. Since then the number of active broadcasters has risen exponentially as viewers migrated to livestreaming sites due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even though all streamsers are concerned about the same things, each streamer’s needs differ greatly. DePass explained to Polygon that Twitch streamers may not have the ability to speak as one big voice. If streamers could organize, they’d likely split off into groups based on official Twitch status. But there will always be that one thing they have in common: They’re required to follow Twitch’s rules, whether they like those rules or not. Twitch declined to comment on this story.

Devin Nash was co-founder and chief executive of Novo marketing agency. a streamer who left Twitch over its gambling policies, spoke to top streamers Imane “Pokimane” Anys and Matthew “Mizkif” Rinaudo (the latter of whom was later dropped from his gaming organization for his alleged role in a sexual assault cover-up) on stream about a proposed action and protest — a big strike in December. Three people — including one of Twitch’s biggest stars — talking about it on a single stream, followed by an outpouring of anti-gambling discourse on social media, made the message loud enough for Twitch to hear. Twitch did more than just listen to it.

Nash said that Twitch streamers with smaller audiences can be impactful, too, and it’s not by Stopping streaming — which he said saves Twitch money, because there are fewer streams to support. If a large enough group streams more — a lot more — and constantly broadcasts its message, that could work as an act of collective power, Nash said. This is also true for reaching out to advertisers.

“[These] workers are at the mercy of the platform,” Rebecca Kolins Givan, associate professor of labor studies at Rutgers, told Polygon. “If they’re dependent on them for their livelihood and the terms of the split changes, they can’t really do anything individually. They can only do anything if they organize enough workers to make it happen. [Twitch] where it hurts in terms of profit, or at least mounts a credible threat to hit them where it hurts.”

A lot of people are tossing around the word “union” to describe the way streamers could organize and use their collective power, but according to Givan, a traditional, recognized union is not an option for streamers (although it would be an option for Twitch employees, or workers elsewhere in the video game industry). There are really two definitions of “union,” according to union organizer and video game industry worker Austin Kelmore. “There’s the legal definition, which is what you can form within the guidelines of the law,” he said. “And then there’s the definition where it’s helping out your fellow workers.”

There’s obviously overlap there, but when Twitch streamers are saying “union,” they likely mean the latter — “the building of power and collaboration,” Kelmore said.

Givan claimed that collective action will be more effective if streamers of the highest reach get together with a large number smaller streamsers. It’s what happened on a smaller scale with the gambling ban — even the suggestion of a boycott from Twitch’s most popular streamers allegedly moved the company to answer.

Because Twitch streamers are independent, they’ll have to look to other platform workers for inspiration, like people who are also independently contracted with a company and tied to a certain platform, be it Twitch, Uber, or Etsy.

Kristi Cassidy, a costume- and dressmaker, is interim president of Indie Sellers Guild. This organization functions as a union for Etsy sellers. Cassidy explained to Polygon that Etsy had upset its creators by changing their terms and creating rules that harm people whose lives depend on it. Cassidy, along with several Etsy sellers, formed the Indie Sellers Guild in April after a weeklong boycott which saw a lot of Etsy stores go offline. The Indie Sellers Guild estimated that 30,000 shops went offline during that week; with millions of storefronts on the platform, Etsy chief financial officer Rachel Glaser said in a May shareholder’s meeting that fewer than 1% of sellers temporarily shut down their shops. Etsy made at least one concession after the strike. They adjusted the Star Seller Program to make it less painful for sellers.

The Indie Sellers Guild is still new — it officially launched in September — and its members are still working out the details. Their demands are still clear. They need an Etsy site that serves them better. Otherwise they’ll try to head elsewhere. One of the guild’s goals is to accredit platforms that Do meet the members’ needs, and to provide support for indie sellers everywhere. Cassidy says that there are currently 2,000 members in the guild, which includes allied members without an online shop.

The other option for streamers, according to Givan, would be to work with an established union like the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), which recently opened up its membership to a class of workers it cAlls “influencers” — that is, any content creators who do sponsored deals and post them on social media channels, including Twitch. Though the size of a streamer’s reach can vary widely — there’s no minimum — not allOnly streamers can join. Only streamers with paid advertising on their platforms are eligible to join. According to the New York Times, streamers have access to health benefits, pensions, collective bargaining support, and mediation services to resolve disputes between creators, brands, and other parties. The benefits of the streamer program are not available for those earning less than a set amount.

SAG-AFTRA appears to have a clear understanding of entertainment’s changing landscape. The union opening up to creators was a great decision. For an industry with very few, if any, labor protections, it’s a start, and SAG-AFTRA has also pushed for change in the video game industry before.

No matter if their collective actions can be called a guild or a union of some kind, Twitch streamers have already been organizing for quite some time.

“[Twitch streamers] can actually care about people who are not just their peers in the top percentage of Twitch,” DePass said. “Stop worrying about seeming too ‘woke’ or being ‘canceled’ and show some compassion and humanity for other creators.”