Twitch Prime Will No Longer Provide Ad Free Viewing

Twitch Prime, the popular tie-in product between Twitch and Amazon Prime, will soon stop offering one of the biggest benefits it has: ad-free viewing. In an announcement made earlier today, Twitch revealed that they would soon be removing the ability for Twitch Prime subscribers to view Twitch streams without seeing any ads.

“As we have continued to add value to Twitch Prime, we have also re-evaluated some of the existing Twitch Prime benefits. As a result, universal ad-free viewing will no longer be part of Twitch Prime for new members, starting on September 14.”

What this means for Twitch Prime subscribers is that they will retain most of the benefits from Twitch Prime, such as the free in-game content for various games, exclusive badges, and the ability to subscribe to a streamer each month for free, however unless that particular streamer has ads turned off for subscribers, Twitch Prime viewers will still see the ads played.

“Advertising is an important source of support for the creators who make Twitch possible. This change will strengthen and expand that advertising opportunity for creators so they can get more support from their viewers for doing what they love. We want Twitch to remain a place where anyone can enjoy one-of-a-kind interactive entertainment, and ads allow us to continue making Twitch the best place for creators to build communities around the things they love and make money doing it.”

The same announcement article revealed that viewers who still want an ad-free experience can subscribe to Twitch Turbo, a relatively new subscription that offers additional benefits such as chat badges and emoticons, and now ad-free viewing. Whether this decision by Twitch is seen as a positive one by the community remains to be seen.