On Twitch, big streamers seem to be living the dream of many gamers: They gamble all day or just chat with their fans and earn millions, at least that’s how some people imagine it. But behind the scenes there is hard work and enormous pressure. For some, success is too much. Now popular streamer Stephen “jorbs” Flavall has spoken out and explained what’s behind the “streamer burnout” phenomenon.
Who is jorbs?
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At some point the chat can no longer be managed
In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), jorbs spoke about his ups and downs as a Twitch streamer. In its early days, it only had about 15 viewers at a time. He was fine with that. He could argue with them, crack jokes, have fun together.
“At around 200 viewers, it started to get tough,” jorbs told NPR. He’s now closer to 2,000 concurrent viewers.
When so many people are asking you questions and telling you what to do, it’s absolutely unmanageable. I started having anxiety that bordered on full-blown panic attacks.
jorbs via NPR
How do even bigger streamers deal with sensory overload? With the really big streamers like xQc, up to 100,000 people are watching at the same time. Sometimes not even the viewers can keep up, as this question on reddit shows. However, these streamers usually have mods and staff who can help them deal with the flood of comments.
Smaller or medium-sized streamers are in a difficult area. For some, like jorbs, 2,000 is too much, but they may not be big enough to enlist outside help. This also makes it harder for them to defend themselves against trolls.
Meanwhile, jorbs has a small team that helps him with sponsorship deals and interviews. The support of his community has also helped him a lot. But building such a support network can take years.
Streamers feel like they always have to be on the air
This problem comes along: For most employees in this country, breaks and holidays are a matter of course. Things are different for the self-employed and this is particularly true for Twitch streamers. Many have the feeling that they always have to be on the air, always producing.
That’s what happened to jorbs. With breaks, streamers always run the risk of viewers getting bored and switching to another stream – after all, there are millions of other offerings on Twitch and the competition is fierce.
There’s no such thing as a vacation. jorbs was too concerned that viewers could lose interest in his channel if he wasn’t on the air for a week or two. Other streamers suffer from this as well.
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That’s how jorbs is doing today: In the meantime, the situation has apparently eased with him. He now believes his content is unique enough that viewers will come back when he’s gone. However, he rarely has a real holiday.
Events like TwitchCon would give the impression of a break, explains jorbs, but in fact they are only working weekends. After all, you are not there as a private person.
Many streamers play a role, the fans expect a certain behavior from them.
Streamers are pinned down to specific content
This is the problem that One-Game streamers suffer from: Many streamers are associated with a specific game: for jorbs it was Slay The Spire, Ninja grew up with Fortnite and Asmongold is inextricably linked to WoW.
If the Twitch streamers then want to show another game, fans sometimes react dissatisfied. In the worst case, the number of viewers even collapses.
Sometimes this puts pressure on streamers: they feel like they can no longer stream what they enjoy.
Anyone who is no longer so directly dependent on the viewers because they have long been financially independent can also react with defiance.
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These and other factors would lead to more and more content creators temporarily retiring, according to NPR. Some wouldn’t come back.
With “streamer burnout” there is even a term for the phenomenon.
Some streamers find it difficult to take breaks. For others, the timeout is involuntary – they will be banned from Twitch. The revenue lost during this time can hit smaller streamers particularly hard. Some are frustrated and want more communication from Twitch.
Twitch bans VTuberin and she doesn’t know why: “Losing everything from one day to the next is scary.”