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Twitch or Kick? Both offer live streaming, but which is better for viewers and streamers? We compare features, monetization, and community to help you decide!
Since streaming video games became mainstream on social media, Twitch has consistently dominated the industry, with most major names from online gaming communities streaming on Twitch. However, with the emergence of the rival site Kick, Twitch is faced with a level of competition some speculate it is ill-prepared to handle. So the question must be asked: which site will dominate going forward?
Twitch was founded in 2011 when streaming was only just emerging. At that point, YouTube was the main location for watching videogames, with major names like VanossGaming or PewDiePie beginning to rise in popularity through “Lets-Play''. Twitch’s explicit focus on gaming (compared to YouTube, which offered a far more diverse array of content), led to rapid growth, resulting in it being the U.S’s largest streaming site by just 2012, averaging over 15 million viewers a month. This growth was further expedited by Twitch’s ‘Partnership Program’, launched in 2013, which enabled it to actively support the growth of Twitch streamers.
By 2014, when Twitch was acquired by Amazon for $970 million, the site was already leading the industry. This would only be expedited by the massive popularity of Fortnite, which led to an increased interest in streaming which Twitch massively benefited from. This can be seen through the game’s leading streamer, Ninja, whose Twitch account had gained nearly 20 million followers by 2018. Overall the number of total hours watched on the site had exploded from just 6.5 billion in 2017 to 9.3 (which, compared to the increase of only 1.3 billion between 2016 and 2017, was a major step). The pandemic only expedited this growth, with many big names like xQc, Adin Ross and Kai Cenat exploding in popularity on Twitch across lockdown, and these names largely continue to dominate the market.
However, in 2022 Kick was formed as a potential rival to Twitch. Backed by crypto casino Stake.com, Kick sought to pitch itself as a more streamer-friendly, community-orientated platform in light of growing streamer dissatisfaction with Twitch. In many ways, Kick was a direct reaction to Twitch announcing it would change its policy on revenue-sharing in October, with the site demanding 50% of all revenue generated by streamers. This prompted a mass exodus from Twitch, with many leading names migrating over to other sites. This gap in the market was rapidly exploited by Kick, who in 2023 launched their mobile app in addition to signing a lucrative deal with xQc- Twitch’s biggest streamer for nearly 4 years straight- resulting in a massive uptick in interest for the fledgling site. As of July 2024, Kick has made massive market gains, having reached more than 1.5 million active users, and thus some suggest it is in a strong position to overtake Twitch as the industry moves forward.
In order to cast a definitive judgement as to which of the two industry competitors are set to lead the way for streaming going forward, we’ll examine two important metrics through which we can measure and compare the two sites: moderation and content. Moderation makes up a key part of what streaming sites do: the whole point of their existence is to provide a safe and secure community from which streamers are free to build up their careers, and viewers can safely enjoy appropriate content. That said, content is equally important, as having an active base of content creators alongside strong viewership numbers on your platform to attract outside talent looking to sell their brand to your site's audience is vital. So, by these two points, let’s directly compare Twitch and Kick.
When it comes to moderation, Twitch has consistently failed to effectively moderate its platform. This has caused great damage to the site by driving away notable streamers and damaging the Twitch brand. Firstly, Twitch’s moderation process lacks transparency, and their community guidelines were notoriously vague and esoteric. For example in 2020, the streamer DrDisrespect was banned from the platform without any formal reason provided. He subsequently jumped ship to YouTube, taking 4 million loyal viewers with him. Similarly, Twitch’s handling of DMCA laws has provided streamers with further fears. For example, in 2021 Pokimane was banned for streaming Avatar: The Last Airbender- despite being one of the largest names on Twitch- which sparked discussion about the problems with Twitch’s community guidelines in relation to DMCA and copyright issues, with them being contradictory and difficult to understand. This shows how Twitch’s ineffective moderation has soured its palatability towards streamers, who are now actively seeking alternative sites to the industry giant, furthering industry challengers like Kick. However, Twitch’s moderators has gone beyond this by actively alienating its own customers and damaging their brand. This has largely come about by Twitch’s system of moderation, as by enabling unpaid volunteers to take on considerable amounts of power in the industry, many cases have emerged of those powers being abused or applied unfairly. For example, the streamer Alinity was repeatedly at the centre of controversy as moderators failed to take appropriate action after a number of incidents such as feeding her cat vodka or by exposing herself on camera. Alinity went unpunished for a lengthy period of time, something many attributed to the streamer’s often amorous relationships with her moderators, leading to accusations of preferential treatment and moderator corruption. Scandals like these fuelled the #TwitchDoBetter movement in 2021, which encouraged Twitch to rework its moderation policies. However, the movement’s demands were largely overlooked, and many substantial reforms such as amendments to the Community Guidelines have only now emerged due to the threat of Kick’s competition, fuelling a cynical sentiment that Twitch is out of touch with the community and solely concerned about profit.
As a direct reaction to Twitch’s failures, many streamers and viewers have posited Kick as an alternative, considering that Kick’s brand is centred around being fairer and more flexible in terms of moderation. For example, Kick’s community guidelines are far less authoritative and all-encompassing, as they largely focus on simply stopping illegal or unethical activity (e.g grooming, promoting terrorism, etc) while leaving other behavioural issues (e.g toxicity, harassment, etc) in the hands of communities. This certainly plays to the benefit of streamers, with many like Adin Ross explicitly stating that this increased autonomy drove his move to Kick. However, this policy has still been controversial due to a lack of moderation instead of an excess of it. For example, the guidelines’ vagueness in many instances has enabled a lack of effective action. For example, its community guidelines promise “enforcement action” against any individual involved in hate speech or using racial slurs, yet across various communities (including the aforementioned Adin Ross, whose chat has been notably prone to abusing him with slurs) this vague promise has yet to manifest itself. Furthermore, Kick has been notably prone to scandals showing streamers involved in predatory behaviour, as was exposed by the YouTuber “Something About Chickens” who showed how ineffective basic Kick guidelines had been in preventing online predators. Finally, it is worth noting the lack of comprehensive standards for behaviour has massively damaged Kick’s brand as a “community-friendly” site. This has been most seen in the career of Adin Ross, who has hosted extremist figures like Nick Fuentes or the equally controversial commentator Andrew Tate on his streams. While these interviews fell under Kick’s banner of “free expression”, resulting in no action against Ross, it has soured Kick’s brand image not as a hub of free expression, but instead as a platform where the worst impulses of the internet are allowed to run rampant. Therefore, from a moderation perspective there isn’t a clear “winner” for either a prospective viewer or a streamer, and so it really comes down to whichever site you deem the lesser of the two evils: an excessively authoritarian moderation structure, or an almost entirely ineffective one.
In terms of content, it must be noted that despite Twitch’s position being challenged by the emergence of Kick, they nonetheless have consistently continued to dominate in terms of content creation and viewer consumption. In terms of market share, Twitch maintains a comfortable hegemony with 72.3%, showing that despite scandal and alienation from some industry figures, Twitch nonetheless remains the largest name on the streaming scene by some distance. It also attracts approximately 30 million active users, thus showing that even if Kick might offer more lucrative revenue splits than Twitch, the streaming giant still offers the largest and most diverse audience from which to build their brands. That said, while Twitch remains strong, the challenges posed by competitors and internal issues have undoubtedly limited its growth potential. At present, Twitch users have consumed 7.1 billion hours of content, and while this is undoubtedly a significant number, if this trend continues Twitch will have had its least active year in terms of hours watched since 2019. While this downturn might be attributed to the unsustainable nature of Twitch’s lockdown boom, this would still be a loss for Twitch, which suggests that even if Twitch maintains the market’s top spot, there is potentially space for competitors to grow should the site continue in its current trajectory.
In comparison, despite its notable growth, with Kick now being party to more than 1.5 million active users, it has yet to effectively challenge Twitch’s position at the top. While the transfer of the Twitch titan xQc to Kick has massively inflated the site’s popularity, it still effectively struggles to compete with Twitch’s top streamers. For example, when comparing all of the top streamers across both sites, only 1 Kick streamers (the aforementioned xQc) make the Top 10 list in terms of hours watched. However, perhaps more concerningly for Kick’s growth potential is that, in terms of average follower gain, not one of Kick’s streamers make the Top 20. As a result, it could be argued that, while many already established streamers might jump ship to Kick, the site fails to effectively develop and expand their view base once they’ve transferred, meaning Kick is entirely dependent on large names coming over to them and artificially sustaining their viewership numbers. While this could just be a symptom of a smaller view base, and thus as Kick grows so will its top streamers, it must be noted that Kick’s emphasis on poaching big names from other sites doesn’t remedy this problem, least of all if Kick (as they are known to do) fails to rope them into exclusive contracts, allowing their content to be spread across multiple sites. By contrast, Twitch’s partnership program- responsible for their first burst of growth in 2013- continues to yield results by enabling the platform to rapidly develop new talent into industry leaders. For example, the 7th most popular Twitch streamer when measured by average follower gain is CaseOh, a streamer who only began his career in 2022. CaseOh’s development as a streamer serves as a testament to Twitch’s continued viability as a framework for streamer success, as he had his big break in the streaming industry largely thanks to Twitch’s programs in promoting collaboration and encouraging sponsorships.
All this considered, it seems Kick is not yet in a position to dominate the market. When compared to the development of Twitch from 2011-2020, Kick has neither benefited from the same kind of lucky breaks as Twitch has, nor has Kick made any concerted effort to develop its own talent or to organically expand its viewer base. While Kick may appear to offer streamers a better deal in terms of revenue, their smaller audience means that until it further develops in terms of viewers, many larger names will simply stick to exclusive contracts with Twitch. Most importantly, Kick has failed to seize on the opportunity provided by Twitch’s failures to build an effective positive brand, making it just as tainted by scandal as its larger competitor. Indeed, one could argue Kick has actually helpedTwitch, as it has pressured them into adopting popular reform demanded by the community and thereby remedying many of the issues that had initially alienated viewers from the platform and subsequently given birth to Kick in the first place. While obvious it would be unfair to write Kick off completely, considering it remains a fairly young streaming site and thus still has time to develop by building up a stronger viewer base that can then be used to attract other streamers with the promise of increased revenue and greater community autonomy, for now it seems Twitch will retain its position as the long-reigning king of the streaming market.
