Twitch has announced a significant change to its content storage policy. Starting on April 19, the platform will impose a 100-hour limit on highlights and uploaded content for streamers. Channels exceeding this limit will have their content deleted, starting with the least viewed highlights. This decision comes as part of Twitch’s ongoing efforts to manage storage costs and improve viewer engagement through other more effective features.
Why is Twitch Implementing the 100-Hour Storage Limit?
According to Twitch’s blog post, the move is a response to the ineffectiveness of highlights in driving engagement and discovery. While highlights were initially introduced to help streamers create quick, shareable snippets of their best moments, the platform found that other features such as Clips, Tags, and the Mobile Discovery Feed have been far more successful in attracting new viewers and fostering interaction.
The platform noted that, despite their low effectiveness, some streamers have accumulated thousands of hours of highlights and uploads over time. This has put considerable strain on Twitch’s resources. With only 0.5% of active channels exceeding the 100-hour limit, the company believes that this change will help manage storage more efficiently, while still allowing for highlights and uploads to continue being a part of the service.
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What Content Is Affected?
The 100-hour cap will specifically apply to highlights (edited snippets of past broadcasts) and uploaded content. However, clips and past broadcasts (VODs) will not be impacted by the new policy. It’s important to note that past broadcasts are already subject to automatic deletion after a certain period of time, so this policy change does not affect those.
Twitch recommends that streamers download or export their content before the April 19 deadline if they want to save it. For those who have accumulated more than 100 hours of highlights and uploads, Twitch will automatically start deleting the older content based on view count.
Unsurprisingly, the announcement has sparked backlash from some streamers. Many are frustrated by the storage limit, particularly considering that Twitch is owned by Amazon, a leading player in the cloud services industry through its AWS platform. Some streamers have pointed out the perceived irony of Twitch’s storage restrictions, given Amazon’s vast resources in cloud infrastructure.
Despite these frustrations, Twitch maintains that the storage limits are essential to the platform’s ability to continue supporting highlights and uploads, while also investing in more effective engagement tools like Clips and the Mobile Discovery Feed.
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Will This Become a Trend?
Twitch’s new storage policy could be the start of a trend in how major platforms handle user-generated content. It comes right after Facebook’s decision to limit the storage of live videos, keeping them only for 30 days before removal. While these changes from Twitch and Facebook might seem like individual updates, they could signal the beginning of something bigger in the industry.
With growing demand and rising costs, platforms may start rethinking how long they store user content. This could be the start of a wider trend where platforms shift from storing large amounts of data to focusing more on effective user engagement tools, all while making better use of their resources.