It seems like they’re leaving a lot of money on the table. I don’t think a significant number of people would jump ship if Twitch updated their policy to give 99% of donations directly to streamers while taking a 1% cut for themselves.
There might be some initial grumbling, but it would probably fizzle out in a week when people move on to other things.
They do, you’ve just described bits. Donations typically go through another platform. Commonly it’s streamlabs and PayPal. How would Twitch track or enforce that? If they mandated streamers disclose that info and pay it like a tax to Twitch, how would they audit that? Prevent people from donating to Twitch streamers? I don’t even know how you’d go about doing that. Also Twitch already takes a decent amount from streamers, any time they try to take more of their money they risk losing their revenue source
Thanks for the informative response.
I didn’t know donations went through other mediums besides twitch. I thought people donated directly through twitch, but apparently that’s what bits are for.
https://bitstodollars.com/
It looks like at the lowest level, you can buy 100 bits for $1.40. That would be $1 to donate, and twitch pockets the other $0.40. They’re already making out like bandits!