Twitch has announced that is going to be introducing what it calls ‘Local Subscription Pricing’ — that will see different territories pay a regionally-appropriate amount for subscriptions to their streamer of choice—on a gradual rollout across the next few months.
Currently, a basic subscription to a streamer (known as a Tier 1) costs $4.99 USD a month, with that figure then converted into roughly the regional equivalent for other territories. However, as announced on the livestreaming service’s blog, starting with Mexico and Turkey from May 20, 2021, the price will now be adjusted in most countries “to better align with their local cost of living’. The two countries will be followed by adjustments in many more territories (listed here), including the UK, later in Q3 2021.
In the blog, Twitch say “A viewer’s subscription price will be based on where they live and have set up their Twitch payment method. We have designed this pricing model to ensure that prices are appropriately set for viewers, wherever they live. For creators this means that some viewers in their channels may see different prices.” The company says there are two main reasons for the changes, firstly from user feedback, and also that they believe creators will benefit more in the long term by seeing subscriptions become more affordable in less affluent areas.
The move is not without its concerns, however, as some content creators who rely on Twitch subscriptions as their main source of income may see revenue go down in the short-term. In attempt to combat this, the streaming company is also launching a twelve month guarantee program that will see Twitch cover the baseline and Prime subscription revenue for three calendar months for those eligible, and slowly decreasing that amount over subsequent months as the hope that actual sub numbers for a creator continue to rise as long as the eligible streamer is still meeting at least 85% of their baseline hours. You can find the full details of the program over here.
It remains to be seen how this will effect Twitch in the long term of course, but the streaming service shows little sign of waning in popularity. A new all time subscriber record was recently set by streamer Ludwig earlier this year as he obtained almost 300,000 subscribers after a 31 day marathon stream, beating previous record holder Ninja by some 40,000 subscribers.
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