Trainwrecks Talks About Twitch Layoffs

After Dan Clancy announced that 400 Twitch employees will be laid off, streamers who criticized Kick.com for not objecting to other platforms firing their staff and giving creators unjust revenue splits have come under fire from Trainwreckstv.

Additionally, Trainwreckstv implied that the streamers who oppose Kick are only appearing to care for smaller content creators in order to profit from their rich sponsorship agreements: “Firings, sub cuts, increased ads with little to no pay & the ONLY ones unscathed happen to be the same campaigning against http://kick.com while protected by their ad-heavy Twitch deals making up to 10M or more a year yet pretending to ‘just’ be looking out for all of you.”

Numerous objections have been made about Twitch’s income split policy from the previous year by both viewers and creators. Prior to the move, streamers received a 70/30 split of the subscription money from Twitch. This changed, however, in September 2022 when Dan Clancy, the platform’s then-president and current CEO, published a blog post arguing for the adoption of the current 50/50 split plan.

The action sparked a significant response, particularly from the most impacted minor content producers. But so far, nothing has happened, and Clancy’s promotion to CEO has only served to further alienate users from Twitch.

Since the gambling ban, Trainwreckstv’s constant criticism of the site has only gotten louder. The goal of Trainwreckstv might be to draw more streamers to Kick. But many people have switched because of his criticism of Twitch and Kick’s lucrative revenue share. 

Many people identified with his recent jab at prominent Twitch personalities for not standing up for smaller content producers. Misty, one Twitter user, pointed out that the reaction to the new revenue split wasn’t handled in the same way as the gaming issue: “I was thinking about this the other day, how all the ‘big’ streamers rallied together to get rid of gambling but don’t to the same to get better treatment/pay for fellow/smaller streamers. why? because they’re still getting paid. only if it benefits them do we see action.”

This analysis was completely supported by Trainwreckstv, who stated: “Holy sh*t, you might get hate for this take, but that’s only because it’s the truth that the character limit didn’t let me put in my original tweet. This is literally a perfect showing of the hypocritical & theatrical politics the “good guy” twitch and youtube streamers pull for clout.”