What is Drops Farming? Twitch changes how Drops work to stop people from farming by watching re-runs

In a statement released by Twitch on social media, the Amazon-owned streaming platform has essentially banned people from Drops Farming on the platform. One of the main ways livestreaming differentiates itself from conventional video-sharing platforms is by increasing community engagement, and drops are an important feature for the purple platform.

How they work is fairly simple. Viewers who meet specific goals, such as watching a creator for a certain amount of time, get rewarded with in-game items that tend to be exclusive. Over the years, the streaming platform in question has collaborated with numerous video game studios to disseminate these sorts of rewards for the stream viewers.

That said, till now, people could also use "Drop Farming" to get the rewards without actually watching the streams live. The term, which was used by Twitch in their press release, has led to some confusion. In a subsequent thread on X from their official Support account, it has been confirmed that watching VOD re-runs will not yield rewards anymore. The term has been defined as follows:

"Viewers cannot earn Drops by watching VOD reruns, also known as Drops farming."

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"This policy is vague": Streaming community reacts to Twitch banning Drop Farming on their platform

As mentioned, drops are an integral part of the Twitch experience. It is frequently used by video game publishers during new game releases and events in live-service games such as Overwatch. The in-game rewards are meant to provide viewers extra incentive to watch the slated video game, while partnered streamers and content creators participating in the said campaign get more traffic on their livestreams.

In a bid to preserve that, the platform has banned Drop Farming, which essentially means potential bad faith actors cannot watch VOD and stream re-runs to get the rewards anymore.

A relevant part of the guideline change (Image via help.twitch.tv)

The initial announcement was met with many questions from the community asking for more clarification. Their post on X received a plethora of reactions:

Even after the purple platform clarified that by banning Drop Farming, they meant VOD re-runs, many appeared unconvinced with the policy change.

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The streaming platform recently laid off around 500 employees, causing widespread concern in the streaming community regarding the viability of the website. CEO Dan Clancy had to come on a livestream to address the situation and revealed that Twitch has yet to become profitable.