Photo Credit: Amouranth
Twitch is shutting down the ‘hot tub stream’ meta and demonetized popular channels – including Amouranth.
Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa is the most popular female streamer on Twitch. This week, she says Twitch completely demonetized her channel with no warning or explanation. But it’s not hard to put two and two together; Twitch has seen an incredible backlash against the hot tub stream meta.
Women streaming in scantily clad bikinis and promising bikini changes for donations and subs in the ‘Just Chatting’ category has plagued the platform for years. Even Amouranth herself admitted the trend would likely cause Twitch to lose money back in April.
While Amouranth was engaging in a hot tub stream on April 20, she says, “Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean Twitch doesn’t like it,” referring to female streamers’ hot tub gaming. “However, I will agree that long-term, it’s probably damaging for Twitch’s ad revenue.”
So Amouranth acknowledges that engaging in risque streaming is damaging to Twitch’s bottom line – but surprised Pikachu face – she says she’s had no warning for why she was demonetized. “It’s their choice,” Amouranth concluded at the end of that April 20 stream. “It is what it is.”
Well, the Twitch apocalypse is here. Instead of telling people they can’t do risque hot tub streams, Twitch is demonetizing their channels instead. Amouranth is losing out on upwards of $30,000 to $40,000 a month on Twitch ads. Amouranth says it’s an alarming precedent, but is it really?
Amouranth is free to join another platform that would welcome her hot tub streams that Twitch has demonetized. But others say it won’t stop at just excluding anything deemed too sexual for the platform.
“People who are cheering about Twitch removing Amouranth’s revenue will be real mad soon when their favorite streamer gets nuked for being a brand risk. If you think this stops at sexual content, think again,” one user tweeted.
At the moment, Twitch has not commented on the removal in any official capacity. There’s also been no update from Amouranth of whether the situation has been resolved or not. What is safe to say is that the hot tub stream meta on Twitch is probably no longer safe for anyone who is legitimately trying to build an audience. You’ll need to find a new gimmick to get eyeballs on your stream beyond sitting in a hot tub and then selling the bath water online.
Twitch demonetized donation whore? Okay