SUMMARY
- Pokimane has decided to retire from Twitch and made her way to YouTube streaming.
- The Moroccan-Canadian streamer blames the male dominance of Twitch for her reason to leave.
Amidst all the internal difficulties that the company has been facing, Twitch received a huge blow recently when one of their biggest streamer, Pokimane announced her exit from the platform. Pokimane had been a part of the platform for over a decade.
She had also signed an exclusivity contract with the streaming site and was one of the highest-earning contributors. Having one of the biggest fan following of 9.3 million, Pokimane officially announced her departure from the platform.
Although in her announcement post, she did not reveal the reason and simply thanked Twitch, now she has revealed the reason. Pokimane uploaded a one-hour-long podcast revealing the reason for her quitting the platform after a decade.
Pokimane talks about Twitch’s male-dominated environment
In the podcast, she was pretty vocal and honest about her reasons for leaving Twitch. She blamed the “manosphere” environment that had been created on Twitch for her exit. Manosphere refers to promoting masculinity, misogyny, and resistance to feminism.
She revealed if that wasn’t the case, she would probably be still streaming on the Amazon-owned platform. “Twitch has regressed a lot. Especially with the rise of so much manosphere, red pill bullsh*t—I feel like that stuff has flourished within the male-dominated live-streaming sphere,” she said.
According to the 27-year-old, some of the most popular and well-established, typically male creators have created this kind of unfortunate environment on Twitch. “Some of the stuff I see them say and do breaks my heart,” she adds.
Pokimane added that her staying on the platform now feels like futilely battling “bigotry and sh*t spewing” from co-Twitch streamers. Alternately she has to grow her following by appealing to their audiences, and neither of which she wishes to do. She says, “Why are you going to speak against someone with dozens of thousands of followers and stans that are going to go against you and sh*t down your throat?”
She further adds, “It’s almost like there’s no point expressing your opinion to people that you’re never going to change anyways, you know? And frankly, a lot of them are prepubescent little boys that just need to go through puberty and then they’ll figure it out. You know, like, I don’t want that demographic. I don’t want to take responsibility for them. But it also hurts my brain to see other streamers put such bad ideas into their minds.”
hear my thoughts on all streaming platforms, exclusivity contracts & more in my new podcast epi 🙂
link: https://t.co/jaFkCVOPIP ❤️ pic.twitter.com/DqBgTOM8Yq
— pokimane (@pokimanelol) January 31, 2024
She also recalled the pre-manosphere days on Twitch saying that during the pandemic, there were so many people who watched streams and actually cared about games. There were more girls too and there was great diversity in the demographic. She reveals that she felt so much more seen and heard at that time.
Pokimane wants to create quality content free from contracts
Another reason she revealed for ending her Twitch journey was the end of an exclusivity contract that she had with the platform. Pokimane reiterates how grateful she is to the platform for the contract which guaranteed income regardless of viewership. However, she reveals that she no longer wants to be exclusively linked to Twitch or any other streaming site from now on.
She feels that the contracts aren’t as lucrative as they used to be earlier. The Moroccan-Canadian also believes that promising a fixed number of streaming hours to a contract often leads to “prioritizing hours streamed versus how good the content that you’re streaming is.”
“My priority is making a cool, safe environment and community for many, many, many people. I think there are a lot of problems that minorities on Twitch still face and I wish they could do more about them. I do think they try and I appreciate that a ton,” she said giving Twitch their due credit for the same.
it sucks because i have been listening to her podcast episode that she released today talking about why she’s leaving twitch, and she touched on the topic of the fact that twitch itself has regressed a lot in the sense of “hate” becoming popular. she talks about how a lot of the… https://t.co/bKm21KcxGz
— sara (@sapharic) January 31, 2024
Now that she’s not bound by any contract, Pokimane stated that she will experiment with other streaming platforms such as YouTube. She also revealed how Twitch’s “messy” management also played a part in her moving on. The female streamer spoke against the rule changes, including the nudity policy, its management of partnerships, its marketing, and moderation, such as inconsistent or ineffective wielding of bans.
She reveals, “But girl, it’s 2024. We still got so many of these damn problems. Like when I tell you there are people, viewers on Twitch, who harass and stalk streamers to no end, who have made thousands of accounts … and you can send this information, for years, to Twitch, they can’t do a thing about it. They’re not going to do a thing about it, because they don’t do IP bans.”
Going forward, Pokimane revealed that she hopes to grow her audience and offer better viewer experiences through other platforms. She hopes to create content away from and different from what she feels is an increasingly toxic Twitch streaming culture.