Twitch VOD-pocalypse

As a few of you have already noticed; I, like many other Twitch streamers, have had to wipe the past broadcasts from Twitch. This includes both the full stream VODs (which would normally remain for 60 days) and all clips, reaching back as far as 2014.

While I seemingly dodged the bullet and wasn't sent any scary DMCA e-mail (and thus can't quote directly) it's clear that Twitch is taking a zero-tolerance stance in regards to DMCA notices.

Sadly, despite having had years to see how other similar platforms manage the issue, and many months to directly consider their response once the DMCA flood started happening, Twitch has barely any practical tools for creators to manage the situation on their end, and seem to have almost no internal tools to manage the issues on theirs either. As evidenced by the fact that they simply delete any content that receives a DMCA notice rather than affording the creators the opportunity to file a counterclaim, and haven't even made it clear to any of the creators what the DMCA claim was for to begin with.

As many have pointed out, this isn't just music, and several people have had DMCA claims on the content they were /directly/ sponsored to produce by the rights holder, and as such, have a full licence to have on their channels. In short, it's a mess.

Twitch's official stance is, repeat offenders will have their channels terminated, no ifs or buts. Again, I seem to have dodged the bullet, I don't play any third party music during streams, but as we saw with Death Stranding and YouTube, just because it's in the game doesn't mean it's safe. So, while my account is currently clean of any strikes or issues, I'd sooner make sure it stays that way than risk everything I've built up.

So what does this mean for my VODs, and how will people be able to watch my stream content if their free-time doesn’t line up with when I’m streaming? Well, fortunately, very little needs to change for me, as I already make a point of uploading all of my Twitch content to my second YouTube channel (Aavak After Hours) This was something I was doing for those of you who didn’t get on well with Twitch’s internal VOD system, but it’s come in rather handy that all the groundwork has already been laid!

There are some differences worth mentioning though:

• No chat integration. Sadly none of the chat meta-data is preserved in my personal recordings so you won’t be able to see what chat was talking about during the stream. I won’t overlay chat on top of the game window, for the same reason I don’t include big flashy notifications or the bit cup anymore. It takes up too much screen real estate. But with that said, I do try to read out any comments I directly reply to, and I’ll be especially aware of it going forward.
• I don’t upload the whole stream as a single video.  Huge 12-hour files, uploaded directly after I end the stream wouldn't work for numerous reasons both stylistic and technical. It does mean that there’ll be a bit of a delay in seeing an entire stream sometimes. I upload between 2 and 4 hours of stream content a day (more, if for some reason I’m sat on a massive backlog. My record was 8 hours) but they’re cut up into 30(ish) minute ‘episodes’ for ease of consumption for those who only have 30 minutes to watch a video. They’re always organised into a playlist, so if you have more than 30 minutes and just want to binge the content as fast as you can, just stick the playlist into auto-play, sit back, and enjoy :)
• I don’t dump dozens of episodes onto the channel all at once. I release the content in 2-hour batches (4 videos) typically, and ONLY THE FIRST in the batch gets pushed to your subscription box. All videos following it get released 15 minutes apart, which means that even if you watch the videos on 2x speed, the next in the batch will go live just as you finish watching the last one. Again, this is to avoid flooding anyone’s sub-feed or bury other creators underneath a wave of my uploads. Just remember that if you see a notification or a single video from Aavak After Hours in your subscriptions, then there are at least 3 others sat behind it waiting for when you’re ready :)
• Added post-production polish. Finally, because I encode each ‘episode’ separately as a byproduct of uploading it, it gets a bit of a polish and shine on its way across from Twitch to YouTube. I don’t edit the videos as I do for my bespoke YT content, but I do perform a few post-production passes to clean up and balance audio, tweak gamma, or cut out tea-breaks / stream raiders / technical difficulties. What’s left is, for the most part, 100% of the game, no cuts, but with as close to 0% of the not-game as I can get. Of course, all that said, this IS a stream VOD, so I intentionally leave in engaging with chat for the most part and it’s only if something goes COMPLETELY off-topic that I might consider pulling it out. But these are Long Plays. Unedited hours-long gaming sessions and I treat them as such.

So with all said and done, in conclusion: It’s really sad to see so many hours of content have to get scrubbed off Twitch. Even though I don’t make particular use of Twitch as a video platform I had a bit of an emotional moment looking back through my old clips, from as far back as the community streams of Robocraft we used to do and birthday events. I’ve seen a lot of the heartache other creators who primarily exist on Twitch have felt when faced with the only realistic option being to wipe years of content and memories away.

Perhaps Twitch will be quick to add new tools to their platform to help avoid this in the future, but maybe they won’t. Either way, I’ve taken the choice to protect my channel and our community as best I can from the potential issues that might occur in the immediate to short term as everyone gets used to the new way things work for live streaming.

While it won’t be on Twitch, I’ll continue to preserve the twitch experience as best I can in VODs on Aavak After Hours.

Hope to see some of you there :)