The Twitch VOD situation is crazy

According to streamers like Ludwig, YouTube has a long way to go if it wants to truly compete with Twitch in the livestreaming space. While the platform has gotten praise from some for its creator-friendliness, it has some technological drawbacks that it doesn’t seem too keen on fixing.

But it turns out YouTube has one significant leg up on Twitch: VODs—and the money creators earn from them.

Moistcr1tikal recently posted a video breaking down his exact earnings from his best-performing streams on both Twitch and YouTube, and the difference is staggering. He made $11,700 from his best-performing Twitch stream (where he watched his esports team win the Rocket League Spring Major), and $84,000 from his best-performing YouTube stream (where he played Bethesda‘s most recent game, Starfield).

There’s something crucial to note here, though: If we’re only looking at the earnings Moistcr1tikal made while he was broadcasting live, his YouTube stream made $1,600—far less than his Twitch stream.

So where did the rest come from?

Views on the VOD.

The recording of Moistcr1tikal’s Starfield stream is uploaded on his YouTube channel just like any other video. It has 4.7 million views. It’s also four hours long. That means it has a lot of room for ad breaks. And, since the VOD is permanently on his channel, it continues to gain views, passively earning money for him.

$84,000 for a four-hour stream, just playing mid, poop-ass Starfield,” he said. (Starfield was, in fact, a flop.) “This was like an insomnia, try not to fall asleep challenge, basically. $84,000!”

Streamers cannot earn money this way on Twitch. The platform simply does not prioritize VODs. It deletes all VODs 60 days after broadcast, and though they’re still watchable on streamers’ channels for those 60 days, they aren’t monetized. It doesn’t matter how many views a streamer’s VOD gets on Twitch; they won’t make money from it.

All the earnings Moistcr1tikal made on his Rocket League

Twitch stream came in while the stream was live. It peaked at around 75,000 concurrent viewers, so a portion of the $11,700 it made was ad earnings. The rest came from around 2,000 new subscriptions. Those cost $4.99/month, and Moistcr1tikal presumably gets a 70/30 revenue split, so he made about $6,986 there.

It’s interesting to note that back in 2018, fellow Twitch streamer Disguised Toast was one of the first to break down his earnings, sharing exactly how much he made from ad revenue, subscriptions, donations, and brand deals. While creators tend to be more open about their earnings these days (especially when platforms like Twitch try to take a bigger cut of their income), it is rare that we get stratified figures like this, with streamers talking about how much income they make and from which sources.

As for Twitch streamers who might look at Moistcr1tikal’s breakdown and wonder what they can do to monetize VODs, there is a fix for them.

In October 2023, Twitch lifted its longtime ban on simulcasting, so now streamers can broadcast on Twitch, while also beaming that stream out to other platforms, like YouTube, in real-time. That means Twitch streamers who are also in the YouTube Partner Program can use YouTube as a VOD recorder and have the video permanently monetized on their channel after the stream ends.

By not monetizing VODs, Twitch—which has never been profitable and is currently under scrutiny from execs at parent company Amazon—is losing out on a significant amount of potential income. (It’s worth noting, though, that storing the amount of video content YouTube does indefinitely is very expensive, so maybe the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze for Twitch, especially considering it left South Korea over “prohibitive” data costs.) But at least streamers may be able to use YouTube to tap a source of revenue that’s already working for people like Moist.