One streamer telling another "Your doing it wrong"

This is going to be a opinion piece on the latest twitch.tv drama. A popular twitch streamer starts to go on a rant on twitter about donations and overlays.

He notes the following:

• A new streamer should not have donations
• Should be doing streaming for "fun" 
• Should be doing it as a "hobby"
• Don't quit your job or whatever else.. 

First question right off the bat is why would this caster all of a sudden care about other streamers and what they do, especially new broadcasters on twitch.tv?

My answer would be he doesn't care one bit and is using this rant to generate free PR.

There is nothing wrong with having donations, layouts in your setup. If you are choosing that way to monetize yourself go for it. And there is nothing wrong with making your stream a business from day one. Do not let anyone saying "Your doing it wrong" discourage you from streaming.

Lately on Twitch.tv I've noticed alot of the Top Tier streamers make a change from game related content to more drama driven (talking badly about other streamers, make false accusations, break twitch tos / roc constantly etc). It seems the novelty of twitch + gaming has worn off and they are seeking ways to drive viewers into their channels. The more elaborate the gimmick or rule breaking the bigger the buzz and viral spreading it will get which results in a positive viewer boost for them.

Also take in the factor of twitch's growth rate. It's not the same as it was in the past couple of years. Things are slowing down alot and consolidating. The following screenshot is concurrent viewers on twitch from 2013 to 2016, if you see the growth rate from 2015 to 16 viewership is going more sideways then up.

Click to enlarge image

Perhaps many top streamers are peeking out and in order to gain anything anymore they need to create drama, a narrative to get people talking about them (good or bad).

I've said to myself, use Twitch as a service, Twitch needs you, you do not need Twitch. There are many other streaming platforms out there just as good as twitch. The different between them and twitch is currently twitch is more popular which may provide more floating viewers boosts.

I think alot of new broadcasters are relying on twitch to bring viewers in the door when you should be doing this exact thing externally from twitch. The way Twitch.tv is setup, its layout, its directory only really benefit the streamers on the top of the lists. 

If there is anything to take away from this broadcasters rant, its that you can see how a rant can create buzz and go viral which will further increase a streamers brand recognition. Which in turns brings in more viewers to their channel on twitch.tv.