Some of the biggest gaming news recently have revolved around formerly beloved streaming platform Twitch. Prior to recent developments Twitch was a much loved site on which hundreds of thousands of gamers streamed themselves to an online audience. The site was also used by companies and organisations to stream tournaments and even things like Nintendo Direct. However Twitch had some big news that caused waves throughout the gaming community and led to universal outrage.
The outrage primarily came from the news that Twitch had installed a ContentID system for recognising copyrighted music and blanket muting sections of VODs containing anything in the programs database. The system Twitch now uses is called Audible Magic. Part of the problem with these ContentID systems is that they operate without the knowledge of whether a user has permission to use the copyrighted music or not. The most famous, and perhaps most embarrassing, example of this has been the VODs of the recent Dota 2 tournament The International. The competition was hosted and broadcast by Valve, the game’s creators. The new Twitch system then muted the VODs of the tournament for containing copyrighted sounds belonging to, errr, Valve.
When Emmet Shear took to Reddit for an AMA he was repeatedly lambasted from various corners of the games industry. Viewers, streamers and even small games developers took their turn in criticising the new system. Shear was quick to reassure about various aspects of the new policies. He said “We have no intention whatsoever of bringing audio-recognition to live streams on Twitch. This is a VOD-only change for Twitch,” and “We have zero intention of flagging original in-game music.” It was also made clear that the flagging of such things like The International VODs was very clearly a mistake with the system and promised a fix. Shear also expressed regret for the poor communication surrounding the new decisions, stating “This was our bad.”
After Shear had experienced the displeasure of the internet, Twitch released another blog post responding to some of the feedback they had received. They announced that they would be removing the proposed time cap on Highlights (which are now the only thing that will be saved indefinitely) as well as adding an appeal button so users and streamers can protest against any wrongfully muted VODs.
Will this swift reaction to feedback be enough to lure viewers and streamers back to Twitch? Within moments of the new policies being announced many content creators were already looking to jump ship to any different streaming site. Will Twitch’s concessions be enough to keep them popular or will their corporate capitulation lose them too many streamers and viewers? The results will be seen soon enough.
