Twitch has announced plans today to offer games for sale through their own platform. Twitch says that its viewers already use the platform as an opportunity to “demo” games, or in other words getting an initial impression by watching a streamer play a game. The progression from there to allowing viewers to purchase the game they’re watching via a button below the stream then makes sense.
After Twitch enables the service, every single game that is livestreamed, so long as it’s available for sale via Twitch, will have an advertisement to purchase the game located below the stream. Those games will be available to play through the Twitch platform, however it appears Ubisoft’s games will continue to be supported through Uplay. Otherwise, Twitch will not be providing Steam keys or supporting other platforms for the time being.
Twitch is willing to meet halfway with partnered streamers, offering them a 5% cut of the revenue for each sale. Unfortunately, non-partnered streams will not receive any sort of compensation for new ads, but it does offer an incentive to become a partnered streamer.
Twitch is also planning to reward those who buy games through Twitch. The Twitch Crate is awarded to any player that spends more than $4.99 on a game. Twitch Crates contain exclusive game-specific emotes, badges, and bits, but every Crate’s contents are randomly generated.
A long list of partners have joined forces with Twitch for the initial launch: Ubisoft, Telltale Games, Digital Extremes, Hi Rez Studios, Double Fine Games, Fred Wood, 11Bit, Jackbox Games, tinyBuild, Raw Fury, Devolver Digital, Gambitious, Trion Worlds, Blue Mammoth Games, iNK Stories, Versus Evil, Proletariat, Paradox Interactive, Vlambeer and Campo Santo.
The launch of the Twitch platform for selling games does not yet have a firm release date. However it is expected to launch “soon” in spring 2017.
