Posted in: Games, Twitch, Video Games | Tagged: Twitch

More Twitch Streams Are Being Paid Just To Stream Games

It's not a new concept to hear about Twitch streamers earning cash for playing games, but it's becoming bigger for studios to front the cash. In a new article from the Wall Street Journal, a few of the major companies have been forking over cash to streamers in short-term contract deals where people have been paid up to $50k an hour just to play their games for people to check out. That's a hell of a payout that not even the best Twitch streamers see on their own over a six-month period. Here's a snippet from the article.

Electronic Arts Inc., Activision Blizzard Inc., Ubisoft Entertainment SA and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. are among the publishers making hefty payouts for the real-time broadcasts, or live streams. The amounts vary depending on the popularity of the "streamer," and could go as high as $50,000 an hour for top celebrity gamers, according to talent and marketing agents.

Take-Two plans to pay streamers to play "Borderlands 3" when the comedic shooter game launches Sept. 13. Ubisoft, an early adopter of the live-streaming strategy, plans to use it again for the Oct. 4 release of its special-ops shooter game "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint."

"Having celebrity streamers play games is an important part of the business," Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two's chief executive, said in an interview. "It is relatively new, but it has to be organic. The streamers have to believe in it."

It's an interesting time to be a top streamer on Twitch these days as it appears you can rack up some major cash if you got the audience and the skills to make a game look good or at least seem entertaining. It's not all that shocking, especially after word came out about Ninja being paid a cool million just to showcase Apex Legends, but this is going to start making people wonder if the person in front of the camera is actually having fun, or if they're just faking it for the paycheck. How do you feel about this? Would you be able to trust a streamer who got paid to play a game, or does it even matter to you?

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