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Twitch Has Exclusivity Clause in Partner Contracts to Keep Gamers Off YouTube Gaming

Twitch's lawyers need a raise. Seriously!

Aug 28, 2015 08:30 GMT  ·  By
Twitch has an exclusivity contract with top gamers
   Twitch has an exclusivity contract with top gamers

YouTube Gaming launched with much fanfare yesterday, and even if some people had problems with the service, it garnered enough attention from the gamer community to be considered a serious competitor to Amazon's Twitch.

While YouTube's appeal mainly consists of its bigger monetization possibilities and its 1 billion userbase, Twitch has the advantage of being already on the game live streaming market for about 4 years.

With 100 million monthly active users, all dedicated gamers, Twitch has built itself a solid and dedicated community.

The Twitch Partner Program

One of the features Twitch provides its users is the Twitch Partner Program, launched in 2011,which is offered to some of the world's most popular video game broadcasters, personalities, leagues, teams, and tournaments.

Any Twitch user can apply, but they have to have 500+ followers and broadcast at least 3 times a week.

Once accepted in the Twitch Partner Program, they'll have access to monetization options, better video quality, channel subscription perks, and the ability to delay broadcasts up to 15 minutes to ensure fairness in multiplayer games.

In 2013 Twitch reported they had 4,000 users enrolled in the program, but that number has not been updated lately, especially after the network's user numbers exploded from 45 million in 2014 to 100 million in 2015.

It's probably safe to say that almost all popular Twitch users are using the Partner Program, mainly because of the better monetization options.

An exclusivity clause that nobody cared to read

With YouTube Gaming launched yesterday, most of these Twitch users will probably want to dual-cast their gaming shenanigans on both sites and have a piece of the ad-generated money from both services.

The problem is that this is legally impossible since Twitch has included an exclusivity clause in all Partner Program contracts, as VentureBeat reports.

In the past, this prohibited Twitch users from posting game-related videos on YouTube, as this older Reddit thread shows, and this surely applies to YouTube gaming as well.

We couldn't find any disgruntled Twitch user complaining the company forced him to take down his YouTube videos, so probably this wasn't enforced. This isn't likely to stay the same.

So for now, with all the discomforts YouTube's automatic copyright takedown system is causing gamers, and with this exclusivity clause on its side, Twitch seems to have the leg up on its main competitor.