Twitch ‘Cheering’ raises $5.9M for streamers

Thanks to Twitch’s new community support system, streamers earned millions of dollars in additional revenue last year.

According to Twitch’s Year in Review mini-game, viewers gave 590 million “Bits” to streamers last year. Bits and “Cheering” are part of Twitch’s micro-transaction apparatus, which it has called “a new way for us to celebrate and support streamers together.”

590 million Bits is equal to almost $6 million going directly to Twitch’s streaming partners.

To use the system, viewers type a “cheer” command, along with the amount of Bits they want to give. A small animated icon appears in chat, with the number of Bits given. The icons get more elaborate the bigger the amount.

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Viewers buy Bits through Twitch’s chat menu, paying with Amazon Payments. They come in bulk packages where each Bit is worth slightly more than a cent. When you give a Bit to a streamer, they receive one cent of the money while Twitch keeps a fraction of a cent.

The $6 million doesn’t take into account other revenue generators at Twitch — like Streamlabs, a tipping app.

Cheering is only available to partners, so anyone giving to ordinary streamers will have to use one of these third-party sites.