Technical issues (followers & hosting)

Twitch has made a number of changes with their site that is screwing with how rewards are done on my channel, as well as how I support other streamers.  As a heads up for those that aren't aware of what I'm talking about, this means that notifications through StreamElements are for the most part broken & I'm having to add point bonuses manually, as well as check for when a new follower has followed (this means that bonuses may not get issued until after the stream has ended, but I still go through the logs/stats to make sure everybody gets what is coming to them).  Additionally, I'm also not getting all the follower email notifications, so I'm have to cross-reference stats between 3 or 4 different pages to make sure followers, hosts & subscribers are getting the point bonuses that are due to them.

The other thing that is broken here has to do with auto-hosts, one of the primary functions I have set in place to support other streamers & I noticed today that these don't appear to be working either (not to mention the permissions keep getting changed; I don't allow reruns to be auto-hosted, but somehow this got switched to on when I was going through the permissions on my account to try & fix it).  Until these issues get resolved, the only way I can support other streamers will be when I am actually online, which is going to be a HUGE drop in the support I was showing them in the past, but I'm still doing what I can despite the circumstances...

Aside from that, I've noticed that the calculated revenue by Twitch keeps dropping (started at around $2.32 for my first paid subscription, I'm now down to $2.07 per paid subscription), this is why flat-rate point bonuses on paid Twitch subscriptions are no longer 1 point per cent spent on those subscriptions & instead award a point bonus based on what Twitch counts as revenue towards the channel (not including their cut), but I did add a 5x multiplier (1 points per minute in the channel, as apposed to 1 point every 5 minutes for non-subscribers) to compensate for the loss in points based on Twitch's continuing drop in what portion they are stating is my cut in paid subscriptions (still not reaching the $100 minimum to cash out after close to a year).

I'll keep looking for ways to get these technical issues resolved, but for the time being, there's not a lot I can do about it on my side, I'll just have to spend more time going over logs & stats to make sure people & streamers are getting what is due to them (whether it be points, follows, hosts and/or lurks).

Subscriber-only video permissions not working, moving sensitive videos to another site

Supposedly Twitch allows for you to set individual videos as subscriber-only, however I've attempted this in the past & it's never worked if the original stream was set to public.  For this reason, it doesn't appear that highlighting videos on Twitch to be available only to Twitch subscribers is going to be an option, therefore highlights may be made, but they will be exported to YouTube, then immediately removed from Twitch afterwards.

To give access to those videos, I'm considering either Discord (will need to determine how to set up subscriber access through associated Twitch account first however) or the subscriber-only extension on the channel.

Subscriber-only videos were intended to only be used with discussions including sensitive information that probably shouldn't be public, only finding out the one I made a few days ago was still public regardless of how many times I attempted to set it to subscriber-only, so until this is resolved, I can't trust that that function is going to work properly & I'll have to keep those discussions on other sites...

Subscriber bonus point changes (take 2)

Twitch subscriber bonus point changes

Within the 2 days that the last entry was made to this blog, I checked the revenue report again & found that paid subscriptions had dropped yet again (from $2.18 to $2.12).  At this point it's been determined that ALL subscriptions from 6/26/2019 forward will award bonus points based on calculated revenue by Twitch, awarded after the stream has ended and been verified & awarded point bonuses will continue to be adjusted as Twitch makes adjustments to the revenue value in my analytic reports.  Basically this means that Twitch Prime subscriptions will gain a full half of a Tier 1 subscription (250 points), everything else is dependent on what Twitch is calculating in revenue.  Subscribers will continue to gain 1 point per minute while watching at all times while the subscription is still active (and hasn't been reversed; reversed subscriptions will result in a ban & block), but the bonus points award not based on watch time will be calculated based on revenue calculated by Twitch from this point forward & adjusted as necessary.

Patreon subscriber bonus point changes
and gift subscription requests

Patreon subscriber benefits will remain the same as stated in the last blog entry, these are not changing, however the revenue gain from a gift sub when requested could potentially give you back some of the points from a requested gift sub after I have a value of calculated revenue from Twitch on that gift sub.

Subscription bonus changes

Twitch subscription point bonuses

In the month of May, there was an individual that chose to subscribe to the channel, then apparently reversed the charge after the sub was already made, resulting in the removal of that revenue.  Twitch was contacted regarding this, however they chose not to respond to the ticket that was opened regarding it.  The individual was banned after that, not for reversing the charge, but for having temporary access to the subscriber-only section, which couldn't technically be revoked after they already had access to it (this section has a bunch of game freebies listed, something they shouldn't have had access to if they weren't intending on actually subscribing).

Over a month later I was re-watching the Ring_of_Favor mockery stream & realizing that with the follow-up situation with iBreezyy (now Breezops), which are the main individuals that ultimately got that list from being pulled as being public, that Twitch probably wasn't responding due to the continuous reports being filed against my account & the publications that have been continued to be published & updated over continuous ignored violations committed by these individuals, I decided to respond to the auto-reply that I got from Twitch when I initially opened the ticket regarding the subscription "not fully registering" with the following response on 6/17/2019:

I no longer need a response to this support ticket.  I was giving it a chance to be looked at before I decided to take matters into my own hands, but seeing as I received no response to the ticket, the individual was banned & blocked for the reason of "subscription reversal", not because of the fact that it was reversed, but because he had temporary access to a subscriber-only perk (Free Games list via the subscriber-only section of the channel) that could not be revoked once he already had access to it.  If he had enough points to deduct the reversed subscription, I would have deducted the points to cover the reversal, however seeing as he was new to the channel & didn't even get the point bonus from the subscription itself, he was banned instead due to it being apparent that I wasn't going to get a response to this ticket within the time period that they had access to those perks.

This response didn't receive a reply either, however I noticed after my stream running through June 23rd-24th that even after getting a new sub to the channel, my calculated Revenue with Twitch actually dropped (dropping from $53.30 over several months to $51.76 AFTER the new subscription should have been calculated into the total (this means that $3.66 got lost somewhere & I noticed a drop in the rate of funds that I gain from paid subscripitions.

Because it appears I'm getting docked for some reason on Twitch's side, it's been decided that giving a flat rate bonus is no longer going to be a 500 points bonus on tier 1 subscriptions, how I am going to be implying a x5 multiplayer on points for subscribers (this means that you gain 1 point every minute watching, as apposed to 1 point every 5 minutes for non-subscribers). Tier 2 & 3 subscribers will still get increased bonuses above tier 1, but seeing as I can't increase the point multiplayer based on tier, this will be additional points depending on the tier (similar to what was there before, just without the multiplier).

Patreon subscriptions + gift sub requests

I've been tossing around the idea of giving gift subscriptions on Twitch to subscribers over Patreon & as of yet, have not done anything official, however I believe I may have come up with an idea.  Nothing will be changing with the existing benefits, but sooner or later I'm going to be putting some additional tiers on Patreon that allow gift subscriptions on request, but for right now, those this is what the plan is:

• Patreon subs of $10 or more per month can request a tier 1 gift sub in exchange for 500 points off of their point total on the channel (a $10 sub would get you 1000 points for the month).
• Patreon subs of $15 or more per month can request a tier 2 gift sub in exchange for 1000 points off of their point total on the channel (a $15 sub would get you 1500 points for the month).
• Patreon subs of $30 or more per month can request a tier 3 gift sub in exchange for 2500 points off of their point total on the channel (a $30 sub would get you 3000 points for the month).

For those who have been subscribers of the channel since I started using the subscriber-only plugin, you'll already know there are Free Game updates being pushed regularly in that list; the Patreon side of that list is much better formatted & you can opt in for email updates when new games are added as well (occasionally you may get notes about this with email notification on when the stream goes live, however due to character restrictions, how many bonuses I can put in that field is extremely limited & also limited to when I go online, so giveaways may have already ended by the time you get that notification if it's been a few days since I've gone live & you aren't checking the channel daily).

Despite the fact that these tiers are not official yet, I am still going to honor these terms, you just need to request it within the month that you paid into Patreon.  Note however that if the charge is reversed after a gift sub is issued, this is terms for an immediate ban from the channel & block on Twitch, no questions asked & no chance of it being removed; gift sub requests will be removed in the future if there are continuous problems with this & the additional tiers will be removed.

Streamers & viewer acknowledgement, how important is it?

When it comes to streaming, acknowledgement of your viewers in chat is important to keep those viewers, gain followers & eventually income through tips, subscriptions or cheers (otherwise known as bits); if you aren't willing to acknowledge your viewers, then there's really no reason in being in your own chat.  I for one have a habit of throwing hosts to the channels I am viewing, but that doesn't last long when it's pretty clear that everything you are saying in chat is being ignored & there's literally no acknowledgement you're even there, so these aren't channels I tend to stick around in & will eventually unfollow & never go back to them with enough repetition.

Am I saying that everything you say needs to responded to?  No.  I personally am too talkative & don't expect everything to be responded to, but I don't appreciate being fully ignored either, it's one of the things that drives me off from being a viewer, if not a supporter of a channel in one way or another.  Yesterday I threw a host to somebody & noticed they weren't even acknowledging the host or any of the comments in chat, I eventually decided to throw a host on somebody else (later just turning off auto-hosting until after my own stream).  Today it was the same situation with that chat, however I waited to see if I would get a response to what was being said in chat before throwing the host, I didn't start getting responses until I stated something to see if anybody could actually see what I was saying.  Of course things got tense after that, not only from the streamer, but also from the other viewers; I debated whether I would just leave & come back at another time to see if anything had changed, ultimately it was decided that because another viewer decided to jump in on the hostility, that I wasn't going to be going back to that channel & removed my follow of over 8 months.

The particular streamer has been AFK-streaming Stream Raiders anyways (something I'm pretty certain he's going to get his Twitch channel penalized over sooner or later), one of the reasons I removed him from my auto-host list some time ago, but I still kept going back if only to support by giving them viewers & the occasional host when they actually were on, but I didn't particularly feel like giving that support when it turned into a full deadzone on replies (not even acknowledgement of promotion of their channels through hosts), so I eventually just decided I was done with it & I'm not currently intending on going back to their channel.

As far as I'm concerned, I will continue following channels for the individual streaming, not specifically what they are streaming (however I will restrict hosts if they are playing games from companies that I am boycotting for various reasons) & a lot of the channels I've been following have changed games & don't have the viewers or revenue coming in that they used to have, so loyalty to a channel based on the streamer (not the game) is a rarity that a lot of streamers don't have.  In my particular situation, I've been streaming primarily Fortnite (Save the World) lately, but I always notice follower drops when I choose to stream another game, that's a pretty clear indication of people that only follow for the game, not the streamer (which is one of the reasons I don't cry about the loss of those viewers/followers).  One of the main things that gets me to follow a channel & eventually host or auto-host them is based on how I am treated when I start viewing a channel (of course past situations have made me more cautious in how quickly I will do so, so it may take a few visits before I'll take that additional step), so it shouldn't be any surprise I'll unfollow a channel if things are getting ugly while I'm in there.

Long story short, a streamer may be still be able to be successful if not replying to their viewers, but those that choose not to are cutting out a good portion of supporters (by hosting, auto-hosting, following, tipping, cheering, subscribing or simply viewing while not being in invisible mode) that would at least like some acknowledgement that they are there, rather than being completely ignored when they may have something that is relevant to a question the streamer may have asked their viewers.

Funeral for the next couple days, streams delayed

Today I spent most of my day at a viewing for my uncle, a Navy Veteran who served in the Vietnam War & was exposed to agent orange when used in chemical warfare during this war.  He passed away one week ago, only moments after being removed from life-support (stating he had had enough of the pain & was ready to go), after becoming paralyzed when he broke his spine in a fall at his home 3.5 months ago.

He will be buried at Camp Williams cemetery tomorrow & I will be going there to attend as well.  Needless to say this is going to put a hold on streams until everything is finalized, however I am expecting to do another stream either Tuesday night or Wednesday before the Fortnite daily reset.  Family comes first, not like I'm actually making any income off of my channel anyways (outside of one very supportive individual who has been contributing over Patreon for the last year), so there's no reason I should miss his burial for something that doesn't even get me closer to paying my bills, I will be honoring his death not only as family, but also as a Veteran that served our country in the Vietnam War & putting my Twitch channel out of mind until after I get back home later in the day.  If I should need more time to mourn this death in the family before doing another stream, I will post an update here; those that are receiving email updates on my channel will always get a notification when a new stream starts, it's the best way to tell when a stream is starting seeing as I have no set schedule on when streams will be done.

4/7/2019 DDoS attack

Yet another DDoS attack, again expected to be organized by Twitch user iBreezyy.  Details as to what started this vendetta is listed in the provided link, it's retaliation to the publication of his poor behaviour in Fortnite (Save the World) back on 2/19/2018.  Tonight's DDoS attack was fairly minor until I shut down Fortnite, however it became a full disconnect by the end of the stream afterwards (forgetting to actually kill the stream after shutting down the game):

9:01:21 PM screenshot

3797 (0.52%) dropped frames at 3:21:17

9:05:45 PM screenshot

9745 (1.32%) dropped frames at 3:25:40

9:12:27 PM screenshot

 

 10616 dropped frames at 3:32:22
does not include dropped frames beyond the full disconnect