Twitch has announced the launch of a new feature that will allow users to pin their messages to the chat for everyone to see. Hype Chat, the name given to the feature, borrows heavily from YouTube’s Super Chats, allowing users to type a comment that will stay at the top of the chat in exchange for a price determined by the streamer.
As detailed by Twitch in a blog post, viewers will be able to pay between $1 and $500 to have their messages pinned. The amount of the payments will be closely linked to the time of the messages, the maximum number of characters and the color they have: “the more expensive they are, the longer they stay at the top of the Hype Chat, the more characters they can have and the more attractive designs they can adopt”.
Of course, as many will guess, this system has a number of rules and limitations: viewers will not be able to send messages with forbidden words and messages from the queue belonging to banned users (temporarily or permanently) will be automatically removed. In addition, the AutoMod will be responsible for scanning Hype Chat messages sent by users with flagged messages, preventing them from completing the transaction.
In this way, Twitch content creators will have a new form of monetization, which would be in addition to Bits (Twitch’s standard donation system), subscriptions and gift subscriptions. Twitch claims that the revenue generated from Hype Chat will be split on a 70:30 ratio, with the streamer taking the lion’s share.
This new feature is the platform’s latest effort to prevent streamers from migrating to Kick, Twitch’s new rival. Recently, the company announced the Socio Plus system, with which it guarantees higher earnings to streamers who meet certain conditions, and also modified its way of labeling adult content.
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