Twitch has updated its guidelines to stop channels from replaying VODs for 24-hour streams. This follows after Riot Games recently announced that all Twitch streams for Valorant would have drops enabled. This has till now caused some streamers to farm viewers by replaying Valorant VODs on loop to make a 24-hour stream. Users like Anomaly have used this strategy to keep an average of 80,000 viewers for weeks since Valorant’s release.
These streams allowed players to leave Twitch on in the background all day to increase their chances of receiving a Valorant key. However, these streams have taken away from those who are playing the game live. Popular streamers like Jaryd “summit1g” Lazar have voiced their distaste for those using Valorant to get views.
📢 We’ve heard concerns about creators continuously streaming VODs while tagging the channel as "Live" to farm Valorant Drops. This harms the integrity of our Drops Program so we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to clarify that cheating any Twitch rewards system is prohibited.
— Twitch Support (@TwitchSupport) April 28, 2020
Twitch stops 24/7 streams
The Valorant category of Twitch is littered with various 24-hour streams because of their high view count. This has taken away from live streamers dramatically considering you have to scroll down the page to find their streams.
Now, such streams will be prohibited. Nonstop VOD replays will be considered “cheating” Twitch reward drops. These streams will slowly be taken down if they aren’t actually live to promote live streams on the platform. Riot Games is fully in support of this action by Twitch. Riot Ziegler commented on the situation via Twitter about ensuring that Valorant drops stay fair. They also gave props to Twitch for being an ally in helping them with the Valorant drops thus far.
Twitch has been a great ally in helping us ship our beta, and they are continuing to support the best efforts to ensure drops stay fair. Here's an update on their VO/Drop policies. https://t.co/jeEM9m6l8u
— Ziegler (@RiotZiegler) April 28, 2020
With these popular 24-hour streams on the rise, the community had started to question the “hours watched” for Valorant. Recently Valorant surpassed 200 million hours watched since its release in early April, but how much of it is legitimate is harder to say now. Nonetheless, Valorant‘s viewer count is still impressive with people continuing to watch live streams after getting their beta key.
For more Valorant coverage, stay tuned to Daily Esports.
Published: Apr 28, 2020 04:50 pm