At TwitchCon Developer Day 2018, we reviewed the many product innovations released in the past year. We also celebrated some of the amazing community contributions that have redefined how streamers and viewers create memorable moments on Twitch.
TwitchCon was a moment to rededicate our commitment to empower developers with the tools and incentives to build Twitch Extensions and game integrations. As such, we announced several product releases and an upcoming roadmap of the products and features that will help developers build, engage, and monetize their products on Twitch.
ICYMI, here’s a quick recap —
Available Now
For developers building Extensions, we announced a new web-based WYSIWYG editor to help you get started building Extensions, as well as an AWS credits program to help you host and scale your Extensions.
Online Sandbox
The Sandbox is a web-based WYSIWYG editor. It makes it easier for developers to build and ship Extensions with robust samples and real-time testing on a live channel.
See the Sandbox in action now.
AWS Credits Program
We’re excited to team up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) again to provide an opportunity to receive up to $1000 of AWS promotional credits and educational resources to creators of promising Extensions for up to a year. These credits can be used to cover the cost of AWS services that will support your initial proof of concept and reduce your burden of building and hosting your own backend to launch Extensions.
Learn more about the program now.
Username Addition
We added “username” to the API and webhook payloads by default. This will simplify a developer’s workflow by using one API for user ID and username calls.
Smart Rate Limiting
Smart rate limiting makes sure that Twitch Extensions can scale with user growth, while ensuring reliability for everyone in the Twitch Community. For example, if Ninja adds your Extension, you get more capacity.
Visit the API documentation to learn more.
Coming Soon
Be on the lookout for some new launches in the next few weeks. Here are few that help developers monetize their Extensions and add new functionalities.
Bits-in-Extensions Enablement
Developers will be able to add Bits-enabled functionality to already-existing Extensions, so that a single Extension can serve both monetized and non-monetized channels. This means that Extensions developers can start monetizing their already-existing Extensions without needing to build their user base from scratch.
Bits-in-Extensions Promotion
We heard your feedback that the developer revenue share on Bits used in an Extension may be limiting broadcaster adoption of your Extensions. From November through the end of the year, Twitch will cover the developer revenue share, so that more streamers try Bits-enabled Extensions. We are confident that streamers will love the increased engagement and delight in their channel and will want to continue using these Extensions after the promotion period.
Subscriptions API
The Subscriptions API provides long-term support, reliability, and webhook capability to simplify viewer subscriber status.
Global Emotes API
The Global Emotes API enables developers to build Extensions with a wide variety of Emotes with clear terms of service and policy compliance mechanisms.
Exploring
We’re also excited about our future roadmap. At TwitchCon, we announced a variety of products and services to help you along your product’s lifecycle. We are designing a roadmap that will give developers the power to build, engage, and monetize their products. Here are a few that are in the works.
Extension Cloud Services
We will provide a runtime for you to build your Extension backend, while also providing access to data services. Additionally, we’ll be delivering new Scaling Solutions to help you unlock scenarios like building viewer progression loops, dynamically segmenting your audience, and more. All these experiences will work seamlessly with our toolchain.
Analytics for Streamers
Streamers will get Extension analytics via Channel Analytics and Stream Summary pages so they can see their Extensions’ usage and performance, which will give them insight into how Extensions are helping them engage and grow their communities.
Social Proof for Streamers
We will deliver an Extension’s social proof through ratings and reviews to improve discovery and nurture feedback from streamers.
Insights Dashboard
The Insights Dashboard will offer better segmentation to help developers understand their audience from a regional, device, and preferences perspective. We will also add competitive benchmarking and industry comparisons.
Bits-in-Extensions Entitlement Service
Twitch will handle user in-game items, which will be a secure way to store and retrieve a users’ entitlements and will reduce the requirement to build and maintain a backend for many Bits-enabled Extensions.
Subs-in-Extensions Limited Preview
We will enable Extensions to be aware of the viewer’s subscription status and to trigger the subscription flow. This capability was launched in limited preview with Snap Camera at TwitchCon. We are also working on defining the business model that will enable developers to participate in the value created by Subs-in-Extensions and plan to have a path forward to share with our developer community before the end of the year.
Watching Ads in Extensions Limited Preview
In 2019, we will introduce advertising in Extensions. Our first ads initiative will enable viewers to support streamers and developers by opting into watching ads to access value in an Extension. We are very excited about the potential of ads in Extensions to unlock the power of monetization for a broader audience of developers.
Merchandise in Extensions
We are partnering with Amazon Pay to pilot the sales of merch in Extensions. Designed by Humans and FazeClan merch Extensions were launched at TwitchCon. These trailblazing Extensions will enable viewers to buy streamer merch while watching Twitch. Depending on the results of this pilot, we intend to expand this partnership with Amazon Pay to include more developers and more categories of physical purchases in Extensions.
Our top priority moving forward is to understand and deliver the tools you need to be successful on Twitch. Please let us know how we’re doing. We’re always looking for feedback from developers like you.
Follow our public roadmap here and post comments or ask questions and give feedback on the Developer Forums.
See some VODs of these Developer Day announcements, sessions, commentary, and more on www.twitch.tv/twitchdev. Check back here next week for more details on how to get all the slides and the rest of the VODs from Developer Day!
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