Twitch makes a change that only affects 0.5 % of streamers – but they are really acidic

The streaming platform Twitch wants to set a little used feature. You get violent headwind for this.

What kind of change is that? On February 19, 2025, Twitch announced that it would introduce a memory limit of 100 hours for highlights and uploads. In contrast to clips, which mostly show short and related situations, highlights are somewhat longer stream excerpts for special moments.

  • According to Twitch, the storage costs saved in this way can be invested in tools that work better to increase the audience participation
  • The highlights would hardly help streamers anyway and only made up 0.1 % of the hours seen on Twitch
  • Only 0.5 % of streamers would currently exceed the limit at all
  • Streamer now have time until April 19, 2025 to mut the highlights and uploads – then Twitch begins to extinguish things. The streaming platform provides filters to help users find the content they want to keep (via X).

    The change may only affect a vanishingly small proportion of streamers, but they seem to be all the more angry and, with their anger, ensure that “Twitch” trends to X with over 160,000 posts.

    Speedrunner are apparently particularly affected by the planned change.

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    Speedrunner are particularly affected by the change

    What makes people so angry? For some content creators, the highlights were apparently a way to preserve their time on the streaming platform. You see gaming history threatened by deletion for more than a decade.

  • Shayy, who has 329,000 subscribers on YouTube, says: Twitch would “completely decimate” years of Speedrunning story. Due to the longer format, highlights are well suited for Speedrunner who can document entire runs (via X).
  • The GTA Speedrunner English Ben speaks of an “absolute shame.” If only 0.5 % of the streamers would exceed the limit anyway, it could not be so important in order to make such a drastic change (via X).
  • The streamer Koefficient is apparently one of the 0.5 %. He had highlights from 10 years and would archive his streaming marathons-now he couldn’t create new highlights for his playthroughs (via X).
  • The Speedrunner Shift (in the cover picture via YouTube) points out that there are inactive or even deceased members of the Speedrunning community, which could not simply download and export their content. Countless games and their history would be wiped out (via X).
  • What can streamer do? Many Twitch streamers already operate one or more YouTube channels on which they upload highlights or even entire vods of their streams. If you don’t have such a channel yet, you are advised to put on you as soon as possible and to maintain the special memories.

    This type of second exploitation of the content has already proven to be a kind of money-cheat for content creator in recent years.

    The planned measure is probably part of the long struggle of Twitch to save costs and finally become profitable. While the streaming platform expressly emphasizes that clips and vods are not affected, there has long been a limit for stream recordings in South Korea until Twitch completely stopped the service there. Streamer presented this with a difficult choice:
    “I lost my job”-Twitch streamer is faced with the decision to leave the country for her career

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