Twitch Launches New Cheer System To Tip Streamers, Will It Replace Paypal?

Twitch is constantly looking for new ways for viewers to engage with their favorite streamers. When watching a stream, you can now “cheer” for your favorite streamer using a new currency called bits.

At launch, bits will cost $1.40 for 100 bits. In chat, you write “cheer” and then the number of bits you want to use, like “cheer1000.” The more bits you use, the larger the emote in chat is. You can earn special badges, like the purple one you get for subscribing, next to your name in chat depending on how much you cheer.

The system is rolling out in beta with 60 streamers including Lirik, Reynad and Swiftor. Twitch says, “The feature will eventually be rolled out on a broader scale as we refine the program based on community feedback.”

It’s not clear yet whether or not cheering will be a good thing for streamers or the Twitch community. Twitch hasn’t said how much of the much of the money earned from these bits actually goes to the streamer. When a person subscribes, Twitch takes half of the monthly fee, so it might be around the same. It feels a lot like Twitch is trying to get a piece of the donation money. Currently, when someone donates to a stream, they usually have to go through PayPal. With this bits system, Twitch presumably gets a larger share of the money.

Twitch says, “at launch, there will also be multiple third party integrations available from Muxy, TwitchAlerts, Design by Teak and others.” They want streamers to use this bit system for donations and they are making it as easy as a transition as possible.

Twitch creating it’s own donation system isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Donations through PayPal can sometimes be withdrawn, forcing the streamer to cough up the money themselves. Recently, streamer Kaceytron had her PayPal account suspended because the company deemed her “high risk.”