Just a few couples of days ago, the biggest streaming platform in the world Twitch has announced that there would be a new feature in its website: subscriber-only streams. With this feature, streamers on Twitch now can allow only people who have subscribed to their channel (and it takes real money to subscribe to a channel on Twitch) to watch some of their streams. And this already seems like a wrong move of Twitch.
A lot of streamers on this website has already said that they would not be turning on this subscriber-only stream feature, as they fear that this feature will divide their audience in a negative way. This is totally true, and now those streamers have even one more big reason not to do that: a lot of gaming companies do not allow that feature.
Reddit user Justalazygamer has scanned the terms of service of many big video game companies like Blizzard, Valve, Riot Games, and CD Projekt Red, and he has discovered that in the terms of service of these companies, there is one same rule (written in different ways though), it is can be easily understood this way: you have no right to ask for people money from videos you make out of their video games.
There are similar rules in the terms of service of Riot Games and CD Projekt Red. These rules, in theory, will make the subscriber-only stream feature a big violation to the terms of service of these companies, because you can never watch those subscriber-only streams without paying Twitch some dollar in advance to subscribe those streamers.
However, when it comes to practical application, there are still some rooms for Twitch and streamers that want to use the subscriber-only stream feature: the rules about partner programs of these gaming companies. In terms of service of Valve and CD Projekt Red, streamers can use that feature as part of a “partner program” with Twitch. CD Projekt Red specifically mentions YouTube and Twitch in the partner programs of this company, while Valve does leave some space for other companies besides YouTube and Twitch.
But Riot Games and Blizzard’s rules are more in favor of the viewers in viewing monetized content issue.
There is small space in the rules of Blizzard: streamers with the subscriber-only stream feature have to make those streams really special, though this is more like a way to defend themselves and Twitch only. While Blizzard’s rules still have some holes, Riot Games is really hard on this matter.
With this rule of Riot Games, there is no way for League of Legends subscriber-only streams to happen. Not on Twitch, not on any other streaming platform on earth. But of course, those rules were written long ago, and there are chances that those companies gonna have some meetings to reach a new multure agreement. But until then, you will possibly not see any subscriber-only streams happening soon.