AGDQ 2018 Twitch Chat Paywall Draws Ire Of Viewers

Games Done Quick events are some of the biggest moments of the year for those into watching speedrunners and those learning to do these incredible feats of game mastery. However, at this year's Awesome Games Done Quick, there was a new decision made by the popular channel that has quite a few people peeved. Viewers can only chat on the official stream by subscribing to the channel for $5. 

At first this seems at odds with the nature of Games Done Quick. People from all walks of life find themselves tuning in for the cool games, the personalities of all the runners, and the general good will of watching a ton of money being raised live for charity. Money can sometimes be an issue for those wanting free entertainment and to get in on the chat. The fast flood of comments in AGDQ’s Twitch chat is arguably a part of the experience. 

Watch live video from GamesDoneQuick on www.twitch.tv

As the stream continues above, Games Done Quick did release an official statement on that decision (from Polygon):

“We take moderation seriously and want to maintain a positive atmosphere in all of our events, especially as we are representing the charities we are benefiting. As Games Done Quick has grown over the years, our channel has now been averaging between 100k-150k concurrent viewers, and moderating a channel of this size has been extremely difficult. We’re currently exploring options to alleviate the situation and have opted to make the chat for AGDQ this year subscription-only. All GDQ subscription revenue in January will be donated to Prevent Cancer Foundation.”

To circumvent this charge and still have free access to chat, other channels have simply hosted the stream and invited folks to hang out there. This is all fine and good in the eyes of GDQ, but a couple channels did receive some Twitch action after things got out of hand. The GDQ_Poverty channel, which was created to allow people to watch for free was eventually given a ban for hate speech, as announced on the channel's subreddit.

Even still, there are those more interested in rational of the decision. 

For starters, the money that people are paying for the subscription goes back into the current charity, which is Prevent Cancer Foundation for this Awesome Games Done Quick. That said, Twitch itself does take a percentage of that money. It is unknown whether Twitch whether Twitch donates that money back, or takes it as revenue.

On the other hand, this move not only raises a bit more money for the cause, but it also helps cut down on the overall noise on the channel. Moderation is nigh impossible at this level of participation and if there are overall less people chatting, there is more call for chatters to actually be heard by others in the room. The chat feed is almost never acknowledged by runners or those reading donations, it’s solely there for viewers. This runs in stark contrast to a typical Twitch stream, where a streamer often interacts with those chatting. 

As a direct result of the sheer volume in GDQ chats, conversations often devolve into spam. It moves so fast that most of the time the goal of the chatter is to get a laugh out of people. Bigger text means more visual space and the chance for someone noticing a joke increases, which is why we see ASCII images or repeat phrases. 

For those unable to pay the sub, but still want to chat, popping into a favorite streamer who is hosting the event or jumping into a Discord could be just as fun.

Overall, putting the chat in the Games Done Quick channel subs seem to have a lot of benefits to the channel. Sure there are a few gripes and those are logical, but there are alternatives that are easy solutions. One can only hope that the funds pulled in by the chat paywall increase the overall donations for the charity by a noticeable margin, which is always a win.