Twitch has grown to become the go-to place for folks who love watching streamers do their stuff live online. However, this might change as the website is said to be testing a pay-per-view feature and people think it’s a bad idea.

Spotted

Streamer News (@StreamerNews) recently took to Twitter to reveal what he stumbled upon as he posted a screenshot of Twitch channel named hgg_cheering_test showing what could be a dry run for the streaming site’s pay-per-view feature.

Per the image, it can be read that Hgg “is streaming for subscribers” followed by “your preview ends in 3:50.” Below it shows what viewers can get if they opt to subscribe to that Twitch account which includes:

  • Ad-free viewing with limited exceptions
  • Watch and chat during subscriber-only streams
  • Unique emotes
  • Subscriber badges

According to Dot Esports, “HGG” is speculated to be “Hearthstone Global Games” which is a tournament where players from across the globe are pitted against each other. The website also stated that Twitch’s plans of putting up such feature have been “widely panned” by its users as they believe that it would only benefit big name streamers and tourney organizers adding that it will offer no real advantage or benefit to viewers.

The community’s two cents

Streamer News even put up a survey tweet about it and at the time of writing, 70 percent of the 13,132 respondents voted that subscriber-only streams is a bad idea as opposed to folks who voted that it’s a good feature (11 percent) and the ones that wanted to see results (19 percent). Streamer News pointed out, though, that it could be an old feature test adding that it’s not something to be rolled out for Twitch’s regular partners.

This was seconded by folks down in the comments stating that it’s just a feature “making a resurgence.” The tweet went on stating that it might have been used for certain eSports events in the past and it’s quite dubious if such a feature will be added across the board.

However, the tweet further explained that the community’s reaction as of late “will shape how Twitch handles it.”

Back in November

In line with this, a Reddit user over on r/LivestreamFail commented that he came across with a survey back in November which he believes that it gauges the interests of Twitch users as to what type of services they would like to pay for and for how much. He even managed to take several things in the survey that caught his attention:

  • Being able to rewind, play, and pause a live stream similar to YouTube
  • Private game coaching lessons from pro-gamer streamers
  • A monthly subscription to streams and videos for a streamer
  • Ad-free viewing across Twitch

Twitch, on the other hand, has yet to make a statement about it.