Streaming platform Twitch plans to cap users’ highlights and uploads to 100 hours.
Users will need to act soon if they want to preserve their content. After April 19, channels still over the storage limit risk having their highlights and uploads automatically deleted. The new policy applies to published and unpublished content, and after the initial purge, Twitch will no longer let people exceed the 100-hour limit.
Twitch does not expect this to affect many streamers. “Less than 0.5% of active streamers on Twitch are over the 100-hour storage limit today,” it says.
Channels with content at risk of deletion will be notified in their Notifications Inbox and on the Video Producer page by end of day on Feb. 19.
The new limit does not apply to the storage of Past Broadcasts (VODs), which are complete copies of past streams that are deleted after seven days automatically, except for Twitch Partners or its premium subscribers, who have a 60-day cut-off. It also doesn’t apply to Twitch’s Clips feature, although these are capped at 60 seconds in length anyway.
Twitch says Highlights are getting the heave-ho because they “haven’t been very effective in driving discovery or engagement with viewers compared to features like Clips, Tags, and the Mobile Discovery Feed.”
The streaming platform pointed to the high cost of storage as one reason for the move, despite Twitch’s parent company Amazon owning the world’s largest cloud storage company, Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Many aren’t pleased with Twitch’s decision. It’s been heavily criticized by some in the gaming community, particularly in the world of “speedrunning”—where gamers try and complete games as quickly as possible while on-stream and often breaking records in the process.
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One community manager at Speedrun.com called the move “frustrating” and said that “Twitch’s changes put years of history at risk.”
If you really can’t let go of your Twitch Highlights, you still have the option of downloading your content and exporting or uploading it onto another platform like YouTube.
Earlier this week, Facebook made a similar decision to limit the amount of video that users can store on the platform. Live videos will be automatically deleted after 30 days (though Facebook offers a tool to let users download their videos).
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