New Twitch Category

Twitch responded to its emerging “Hot Tub Meta” this week with the creation of a new streaming category which is the Pools, Hot Tubs & Beaches. Twitch often finds itself at the heart of controversy and online discourse as one of the most recent topics of discussion was the merit of “hot tub streams” in which creators would stream themselves in a pool or hot tub, typically in some sort of swimsuit.

On May 21st, Twitch announced that the new category will be going live and that they had a lot of discussions eternally over how to deal with the hot tub controversy taking over the platform. The goal of this new “Pools, Hot Tubs & Beaches” category is to give people who streamed in swimsuits and related attire a more fitting category other than the catch-all that “Just Chatting” has become. In the blog post which they [posted on twitter, they went over some of the criticisms hot tub streamers have been facing, such as their content being too sexual for the site or that they’re using Twitch as a way to promote more adult-themed content on other platforms.

Twitch wrote; “First and foremost, no one deserves to be harassed for the content they choose to stream, how they look, or who they are, and we will take action against anyone who perpetuates this kind of toxicity on our service”. Twitch also addressed that they will be allowing the streamers to write their subscriber names on their bodies but only if they have appropriate coverage. Furthermore, Twitch says they will work with streamers to better understand what “brand safe” means to advertisers and it was feedback from advertisers that resulted in the creation of the new category.