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September 1 marked the day Twitch streamers took a day off from streaming. The protest was aimed at making the streaming platform realize that it can no longer ignore the plight of streamers.
Several streamers joined hands and together decided to take a day off Twitch after the website did close to nothing to solve the issue of hate raids. These raids against streamers hailing from marginalized communities had become a frequent phenomenon on the streaming platform. Unfortunately, Twitch did not resolve the issue.
Clearly, streamers had to show Twitch management that the creators are who make the platform successful, and without having a safe space to create content, they will not be able to do so.
Almost 5,000 streamers decided to take a day off Twitch, seriously hurting its viewership. This did not include any major streamers except a few whose scheduled break happened to be on September 1.
How many views did Twitch lose as streamers took a day off?
Based on preliminary data from TwitchTracker, during the protest, there were 5,000 fewer streamers during the normal hours and 13,000 fewer streamers during peak hours.
As a result of thousands of streamers not streaming, Twitch lost about 500,000 views in normal hours to about 1,000,000 views during peak streaming hours.
Clearly, a loss of half to a million views is a significant drop in revenue for Twitch. Moreover, many streamers had also chosen to loop videos on their channels and not create content that is not reflected in these numbers.
It is difficult to estimate the revenue Twitch lost in a single day, but with all the donations and ad time missing, it has to be in millions of dollars.
Was #ADayOffTwitch successful?
Although these numbers sound fairly high, whether they will make an impact is still uncertain. No big streamer took a day off Twitch and the likes of DrLupo and TimTheTatman, who are now streaming on YouTube, had their weekly off. Therefore, a chunk of the lessened viewership belonged to this duo.
Unfortunately, unless and until Twitch makes an official statement on the issue or takes some action against hate raids on the streaming platform, it would be premature to call #ADayOffTwitch a success.
