Beginning next month, Twitch Prime members will no longer be able to benefit from the universal ad-free viewing feature. The news came from an official blog post from the streaming service stating that as a result of some "re-evaluation of some of the existing Twitch Prime benefits, ad-free viewing will no longer be part of Twitch Prime for new members".

This change takes into effect starting September 14 for new members but if you already have a monthly subscription, you will still be able to enjoy ad-free viewing until October 15. Annual subscriptions will benefit from this experience until the next renewal date but you can also opt to upgrade to an annual subscription before September 14 should you want to take advantage of the disappearing feature.

Nevertheless, the blog post states that "all other Twitch Prime benefits, like monthly channel subs, monthly games and loot, and chat badges are not changing".

As for the reason behind this change, the blog post reads the following:

Advertising is an important source of support for the creators who make Twitch possible. This change will strengthen and expand that advertising opportunity for creators so they can get more support from their viewers for doing what they love. We want Twitch to remain a place where anyone can enjoy one-of-a-kind interactive entertainment, and ads allow us to continue making Twitch the best place for creators to build communities around the things they love and make money doing it.

Ad-free viewing experiences will still be available via the service's other offer, Twitch Turbo, at the monthly fee of $8.99. Additionally, Twitch Prime subscribers can get channel-specific ad-free viewing as part of Prime by using their monthly subscription token on a channel that has ad-free viewing for subscribers turned on.

What do you make of this piece of news? Will it affect your subscription plan?

SOURCE

 

[MasterJ360]

The good news is that Twitch cares about it's creators unlike TrashTube erm.. YouTube

 

[Nollog]

Dropping the "free" games would've been better imo.

But then they wouldn't be able to say "free games" as a perk, nevermind the game is worth 1 or 2 cent as it's probably been in every bundle ever.

 

[MikaDubbz]

Seriously, fuck all of the streaming services that claimed to be changing the way we digest television and media, only to become not all that different from traditional television by bringing back ads. Twitch isn't alone here, Netflix has started testing putting ads between episodes of shows in select areas. So stupid.

 

[Subtle Demise]

Yet Google still manages to pay its content creators through Youtube Red, and with that subscription you also get ad-free (!) and unlimited streaming on Google Play Music. Oh and you can also download anything on the Play Music library for offline play.

 

[Localhorst86]

Yet Google still manages to pay its content creators through Youtube Red, and with that subscription you also get ad-free (!) and unlimited streaming on Google Play Music. Oh and you can also download anything on the Play Music library for offline play.

Until they decide otherwise.

With Netflix trying to introduce ads (for their original content) inbetween episodes of unrelated shows, amazon prime video (Yes, thanks amazon for showing me an ad of "the man in the high castle". Now let me continue watching the show I was watching: "The man in the high castle" - wth is wrong with you, Amazon?) doing the same for ages already and twitch re-introducing ads for its premium subscribers I fell like we're going to start seeing this behaviour more and more.

 

[supergamer368]

More importantly, Amazon US is losing the 20% off pre order bonus too :/ that one sucks way more

Seriously? “Oh, no more discounts guys. but hey, CREDIT SYSTEM!”

 

[Song of storms]

Wow, that is awful and pathetic how they're trying to spin it as a good thing.

I would hope members vote with their wallet.

That's exactly what I'm doing. I'm not paying the premium entrance fee if I have to be harassed by promoters.

 

[Glyptofane]

Seriously? “Oh, no more discounts guys. but hey, CREDIT SYSTEM!”

If it's anything like Best Buy's $10 credit on "select" preorders system, expect it to apply to almost nothing.

 

[Kioku]

Sucks but I didn't get Prime for Twitch. So I don't really care. But this may encourage people to start using ad-blockers. GG, Twitch.

This. I can understand why some of you are frustrated.. But honestly? I don't use Amazon Prime for Twitch. It was just a nice bonus. Besides, I have an adblocker so I didn't even know that was a thing. Meh.

 

[leon315]

ADs are not that terrible: just look at Overwatch league's AD, u eventually earn tokens watching them and u can spend earned token to get ingame exclusive skins.

 

[ThoD]

ADs are not that terrible: just look at Overwatch league's AD, u eventually earn tokens watching them and u can spend earned token to get ingame exclusive skins.

Are you trying to imply that ads are ok on an overpriced crappy game that also has microtransactions in it? No wonder you think Twitch doing this is fine...

Seriously, there's no need for ads for people who are actually paying, Twitch already takes a fee from streaming earnings/subscriptions anyway, so it definitely isn't losing money. I don't like ad-blockers (too much of a pain to selectively blacklist/whitelist pages individually since I want to support some pages through ads) so I put up with things like this, but it can get annoying. I may want to watch a stream, then have to sit through an intermission ad for minutes before I can even watch the stream and once I got an ad SO long the stream had literally ended by the time I was able to watch (half hour stream).

 

[WhiteMaze]

Twitch Prime benefits include:

- Free useless loot nobody wants

- Emoticons!

- A big fuck you

Buy now!

 

[the_randomizer]

Thank you uBlock Origin.

 

[8BitWonder]

Seems like a reasonable time to ask, anyone know if pi-hole catches Twitch ads?

I'd rather just set up a pi for it than do the whole Turbo monthly subscription if I can avoid it.

 

[rydamusprime]

Reminds me of how annoyed I would get when I bought a DVD that I couldn't instant skip passed the trailers at the beginning, or VHS tapes with WAY to many trailers.... *grabs cane and walks away*

 

[ThoD]

Reminds me of how annoyed I would get when I bought a DVD that I couldn't instant skip passed the trailers at the beginning, or VHS tapes with WAY to many trailers.... *grabs cane and walks away*

Good times, used to literally just copy VHSs and DVDs to new ones leaving out annoying trailers, logos and whatnot since I had some that took 3-5 mins just to start

 

[sh0wst0pper]

Seems like a reasonable time to ask, anyone know if pi-hole catches Twitch ads?

I'd rather just set up a pi for it than do the whole Turbo monthly subscription if I can avoid it.

That's what i was going to ask. What ad-blocking programs are people using to bock twitch ad's?

 

[WhiteMaze]

or VHS tapes with WAY to many trailers.... *grabs cane and walks away*

Freaking comedy gold

 

[Burlsol]

Watching ads for those bits aren't even good to watch, and also ads during vod is annoying. Now they trying to make ads more relevant in exchange for more ways to siphon money. If ads wasn't as intrusive or more targeted to the viewer's preference, it wouldn't be so bad. (some ads aren't even a ad, lasting 2 minutes sometimes 10 or even more rare 30 minutes)

Except that ads don't care about volume controls. Given that many people keep channels playing mostly for background sound that isn't obtrusive, being blasted with sound from an ad playing is going to be the quickest way to make people stop using the platform completely. With some of the ads being 20-30 minutes long, this is just going to piss alot of people off. Making ad-free limited to only the channels you subscribe to unless you shell out an additional 8.99 a month is basically an insult. This will just make people stop subbing to individual streamers so they can afford turbo... killing revenue for smaller streamers.

my adblocker works great, thanks twitch

Unfortunately adblocker doesn't work for some channels due to the way that the ads are embedded in the actual video instead of being a kind of redirect. They rolled out this process a year or two ago to channels that opted in.

 

[mezz0]

That's the way the world works now I guess; start a free service, charge a little for extra's; realize there is more money to be made and create a subscription service; milk the paying customers for all they have and then make even MORE money by selling advertisements and a gigantic amount of personal data to the marketing/advertisement firms even though they already made money... from consumer to product AND YOU STILL PAY FOR IT... f3ck all those guys (no gender bias implied)!

TV and streaming services are so freaking jealous on how the games market turned out the last 10 years...
I hope all those greedy streaming/other services get their 'loot box fiasco' soon.