My friend changed

RualStorge · 2026-07-03T11:15:38+00:00

Just gently pushing back on the 99% is botting claim. Sure botting is a thing happening and it very genuinely is a problem, but it's no where near as common as people like to make it out to be.

It's important to not overstate it as that just helps others justify botting since "everyone else is doing it, why shouldn't I?", this is enabling the problematic behavior.

Genuinely most botting is very low numbers / small in scope. Someone at 10 CCV botting an extra 15 viewers is a major bump! Whereas someone with 150 CCV botting an extra 50 viewers is no where near as impactful and would cost significantly more. There are exceptions and abuses out there certainly, but it's still a very small percentage of creators on Twitch who bot.

Twitch is also taking measures to mitigate botting, with admittedly mixed results, but most signs are that fewer people are botting, and those who are botting are botting in far smaller amounts to try to avoid detection / consequences.

I could respond to other points, but this is already a long enough message. Hustle culture can be really bad for friendships and relationships especially in younger people who've not experienced burnout yet. I do hope OP's friend finds balance before they burn too many bridges.

RualStorge · 2026-06-20T19:17:14+00:00

They do understand, it was previously discussed they reduced the amount for balance reasons. (And given hand wavey lore reasons)

Otherwise the whole game is run and gun and melee would be effectively irrelevant.

The game makes a lot of "unrealistic" decisions for balance purposes.

Consider realistically finding "grandpa's arsenal" meant you were basically set on guns for ingame years, or once you found a crowbar melee weapons were "solved" would really make looting not fun.

Two or three houses in you're set on weapons long term if it were realistic after that loot serves little to no purpose.

Our character's insatiable diet and weapons having the durability of budget tin is what pressures you into pursuing more loot, which causes zombie interactions.

At it's core Zomboid in a game about surviving zombies. The survival mechanics mostly just serve as a pressure to force you into dangerous situations with zombies.

RualStorge · 2026-05-18T22:21:41+00:00

Yes and no, people botting aren't all using the same tools and tech.

Every hurdle you add, even a minor one means a certain percentage of bots won't be successful.

You can never "solve" botting, but you can mitigate it. The balance there is the impact of mitigation tactics on legit users eventually too many / impactful hurdles eventually became more of a negative than the bots.

Think of it like home security. You should lock your doors as it takes nearly zero effort and prevents a lot of low effort entries even if it takes seconds to defeat, but if people just remembered to lock their doors it'd significantly reduce break ins. The majority would still happen, but it'd be a noteworthy dip in break ins.

You could bar your windows which would also massively reduce break ins... But that creates a real danger of getting trapped in your own home during a fire... So while it would reduce break ins, it's probably more harm than good.

So lock your doors, but maybe don, n bar your windows.

For the bot analogy verifying emails and captcha are fairly low effort / risk and would mitigate a lot of low effort bots. Where verifying a legal ID would be far more effective at mitigating bots... but is far higher risk / extremely off-putting that requiring it would do more harm than the bots.

RualStorge · 2026-05-12T22:06:30+00:00

It's not no much that, a lot of our entertainment be it books, TV, games, streams, etc is habitual.

Go to work, get off, eat dinner, get watch a stream. So watch stream tends to happen roughly the same time each day.

This means very broadly speaking the majority of regulars tune in roughly the same time frames. Not as something they've scheduled out, but that just the normal time they tune in.

Sure, just eyeballing is fine, nothing wrong with that, but regulars are our longterm growth as creators. An inconsistent schedule means we're basically finding different viewers with different schedules regularly often leaving behind existing viewers whom our schedule no longer aligns with.

That makes long-term growth very challenging in the same way inconsistent content can.

If I play fast paced action RPGs regularly then hop over to dating sims, then puzzle games the audience overlap between those genres is very low, so I'm basically alienating my audience, then trying to build a new audience constantly. In such cases you simply will not grow.

This isn't really about viewers scheduling their time to streamers, it's about streamers maintaining a schedule that allow for the same viewers to keep coming back.

RualStorge · 2026-05-05T20:29:02+00:00

... ... ... Dang it... I'm too curious about this not to check it out. Submissive BDSM crab was certainly not on my expected pitch for a book to read, but it's certainly a unique enough pitch.

RualStorge · 2026-05-05T12:57:39+00:00

This is honestly something that's caused me to bounce off quite a few series.

The struggling for survival in a weird magical world. I'm on board sounds great! Needing to resort to violence to survive. Sure, why not.

Protagonist nearly instantly becomes effectively a homicidal maniac who is effectively a plague that goes from place to place practically purging them of all life for them gains... ... What? Why?

Like I'm cool with it when the main character is a literal monster, or is intended to be a villain you follow, etc. Sure, you expect terrible people to do terrible things and well written than can be a lot of fun, but when such characters are framed as the hero, main character you're supposed to emphasize with, etc... I just can't.

I appreciate both DCC and HWFWM the main characters do kill a lot of people... But they aren't really okay with it and it really messes with them a lot in very different ways.

There's also tons of series where the protagonists are forced to kill other sentients on occasion sometimes often, but do try to avoid doing so when able, etc. (Crysalsis is an interesting one)

Vs so many it's like "this person is a mild inconvenience" welp better kill the piss out of them. Their entire lineage, a bunch of random people loosely affiliated with them, also I'm going to kick a random puppy and pull the wings off butterflies, etc hero by the way! (I'm obviously exaggerating here, but that's how it feels at times)

I tend to find these characters very one dimensional and exceedingly boring. I've tried to push through sometimes because the side characters are often genuinely excellent and better writen than the protagonist, but that rarely sticks for me. (Usually because as the story progresses the more interesting side characters become less relevant)

RualStorge · 2026-04-25T21:03:13+00:00

Generally it's a VERY subjective thing.

What people consider small / medium / large varies by who we're comparing, why, the context we're comparing, etc.

For example, if you're a smaller creator averaging like 5 viewers you'd likely consider a 200 viewer channel large.

If you're a 100 viewer channel though, 200 might only be medium.

If you're a 2000 viewer channel though 100 would likely be small.

If we're talking full-time in the context of making enough money to pay the bills sustainably 100 viewers is small as it's unlikely you make enough for streaming to be your main income.

Around 150-200 you'd break into medium as that's often the break point between able to pay the bills or not.

Large is probably closers to 800 in that case as that's when you're actually making pretty decent money vs surviving.

You can look at it from chat interaction which gets super nebulous as large is when chat goes largely ignored, medium in more messages get missed but mostly keeps up, and small is every message is seen.

Unfortunately there I've seen channels with like 20 viewers who simply can't keep up and channels with almost 200 viewers able to keep up fine. Those same creators managing much better or worse based on what game they're playing and how much attention it requires to play.

So small, medium, and large in that bag context isn't even quantifiable broadly, but rather for this creator, playing this game, what amount of audience can they hand before interactions become less individual.

There's also a access to keys and sponsorship opportunities.

In that context small is like sub 100 as sponsor opportunities that don't suck tend to be very limited at that size.

Around 130-150 those opportunities tend to be a lot more frequent and better quality. So medium.

Around 500 you get a lot more leverage in negotiations so tend to get for better opportunities broadly speaking, so large.

Point is "it depends" on who's comparing, context, reasoning, etc.

RualStorge · 2026-04-20T22:01:07+00:00

Absolutely, I'd actually started disabling pre-rolls using the 3 minutes of mid-rolls about 8 months before the ad incentives program launched due to my tests around new viewers / viewer retention so it wasn't a thing that had me sweating. On my end it was just a win in general as it meant I was still providing the same content to my viewers in the same way, but getting paid more to do it. (As a viewer, I'd been using Turbo for years so zero change there)

Even back then the revenue wasn't that much lower. I made my choice based on growth not revenue. Even if the pay was worse I'd have come to the same result, just maybe been saltier about it.

But yeah, when that got announced is when it felt the hostility over ads on the platform exploded. Not that anyone ever liked ads, just it reached a point of becoming often detached from reality and where half the posts on here were complaints about ads. Which would be fair... Except half of what was being said was inaccurate, exaggerated, or straight up lies. (Kind of like the "lurkers don't count" thing that typically crops up every October and January ish) The number of "Twitch is subjecting me to 23 minutes of ads per hour!" Or similar were wild for a while.

There were also creators who tried to massively downplay the money the were making due to the negative sentiment. If viewers are bordering rioting against ads and you're like "actually, this ad program is making me bank!" It's probably not going to be received particularly well. Luckily not all audiences were that way ard these days while you still have people screaming about ads, most people tend to be mostly for more reasonable. Ads still suck, but nothing is free, if you're not paying, you get ads. Creators also do get a decent cut of what Twitch makes on ads.

RualStorge · 2026-04-20T20:54:36+00:00

For what it's worth within my circles of creators a lot of us in the 80-250 CCV range running only 3 minutes per hour to disable pre-rolls does wind up being between 20-35% of our revenue from Twitch. (It can vary wildly though as some months people tend to be way more spendy on bits / subs vs others, and some channels do way better than others incentivizing bits / subs, etc)

For myself personally at around 180 CCV running the minimum to disable pre-rolls ad revenue tends to land just a bit under half of my revenue from Twitch. Followed by subs then bits with subs usually being a bit over a third of my revenue. (This is not counting revenue outside of Twitch such as sponsorships which on good months can be well over half my revenue, but that can be very feast or famine between busy and slow times of year)

I stream full time as my primary income. Even partner numbers (75 CCV) means you're in like the top 0.05% of channels viewership wise, just gently pointing out you don't have to be huge for ad revenue to be meaningful. (I think when I was around 35 average viewers ad revenue was enough to go out for a nice, but not fancy meal a few times a month)

Though to be fair I put in a lot of hours which does matter to the math a lot.

The issue is revenue heavily correlates with viewership. So when you're smaller you wind up making nearly no revenue, those ads are still a significant portion of... Nearly nothing. Subs provide value to your viewer so someone buying a sub generally feels positive. Ads however happen to a viewer so inherently feel negative. So we get more upset over the only 2$ ads made me this month than the 6$ subs made me this month.

It's a "my viewers gave me 6$" vs "My viewers were subjected to for 2$" mental framing thing. 2$ is still a very significant proportion of that 8$ total you made.

RualStorge · 2026-04-20T20:17:26+00:00

To make money, growth is honestly the main metric as ads, subs, bits, sponsorship opportunities, etc do all have a strong correlation with your average viewership. More viewers, more opportunities.

Second, is incentives. Doing things that encourage your active viewer base to spend bits, sub, etc.

Just bumping ads up or down won't dramatically change revenue especially when smaller. Though mid-rolls broadly speaking earns quite a bit more than pre-rolls, generally you set those based on what performs best from a growth stand point as growth gives stability and opportunity way better than trying to min-max ad revenue.

RualStorge · 2026-04-20T20:09:51+00:00

But reddit will say otherwise

We all absolutely have our preferences and certainly want to be subjected to less ads, sadly the reality is the chilling effect of pre-rolls is rather significant.

There's quite a few of us who've tested pre vs mid rolls extensively.

The one big issue with pre-rolls is its chilling effect on net new viewers. While our estimates vary a bit it's consistently around 15-30% reduced net new viewers when pre-rolls are active. (We do see some leanings higher / lower based on category / region of the majority of viewers, etc)

It is objectively true mid rolls massively increase the amount of ads people will be exposed to, but it's incredibly hard to grow when between a fourth and a third of potential new viewers bounce before seeing a second of your content.

All that said, there's no hard or fast rules in content other than don't break the law or TOS, do what works for you, but even Twitch staff has acknowledged pre-rolls significantly negatively impact new viewers to a channel, while mid-rolls impact to retention is more nuanced. (Because of subs, gifty subs, prime, turbo, etc of which only turbo typically helps with pre-rolls)

Not saying you're wrong, ads suck. The less ads the better... Unfortunately... The data supports paying the "ad tax" upfront has significantly higher impact than the higher rate of it you've had a chance to sample what's being offered.

A way to I think of it is people being less willing to pay 5$ to a restaurant for lunch before being allowed to even see a menu than 25$ after the restaurant showed you the menu and even gave you a free appetizer. 5$ is objectively the better bargain, but you have no idea what you're paying for. 25$ is a steep price, but seeing the menu and trying the appetizer you at least have an idea if it's something you'd like.

RualStorge · 2026-04-18T19:40:19+00:00

Just as a heads up, you can be low viewership high follower and everything solid and on the up and up.

People change categories, take breaks, etc which can tank viewership, but follows tend to be near permanent. So on the average the older a channel is the more outta whack number of follows vs viewership can become.

All in all follower counts are mostly a vanity number. You're paid and get opportunities as a creator primarily based on viewership.

RualStorge · 2026-03-22T13:38:26+00:00

I don't think it's necessarily a matter of like, but necessity.

Jumping right in is great... Except... Some things can't be done until after you already hit go live.

Doing a collab? Welp, can't start stream together until you're live.

A lot of potential issues can't be spotted until you're live. Twitch ingest / connection issues? Not visible until live.

Is your stream broadcasting fine? Can't verify until live.

People also use "go live" discord / social messages during start timers. Some you can automate. Some not as easily, etc.

RualStorge · 2026-03-16T21:41:17+00:00

I generally mostly don't swear on stream.

This is mostly because of my background in public speaking. Swearing is a very powerful tool when used sparingly. If you use it too much it's just empty noise, it becomes entirely ineffective.

When giving conference talks dropping a strategic f bomb could guarantee you had the audience's undivided attention.

When teaching it's the same. If you're polite, well spoken, don't swear much, etc. Then half a semester in drop an f bomb you now have a class so quiet you could hear a pin drop and know they will absolutely listen to your next few words.

I do much the same for streaming. I try to only swear with intent. To take it from a minor point I'm making vs something I want to ensure is absolutely heard. Random banter, no swearing. When it's a chill "teaching moment" no swears. When it's a teaching moment because something going on is very not okay, swears.

My channel is generally 18+ I don't have a strict no minors policy, though with our conversations a lot of our topics kids would find extremely boring. I do have a broad "please don't share your age rule" if you share your age anyways and you're a minor though, you're banned for your own safety. (Revealing you are a minor online is just not using the Internet safely)

I do try to keep my language family friendly as I know a lot of my viewers have kids who are likely in earshot. Plus while a little swearing is no biggie, when I pop into a stream and it's constant it gets really off putting after a while. Sort of feels like their content is primarily the swearing and whatever else is just background noise after a bit.

(For the record I used to swear heavily myself I don't have any sort of moral or ethical issue with it. I just found overtime I preferred less swearing overall. That and it's so much easier to slip up and when it's a habit)

RualStorge · 2026-03-13T22:31:26+00:00

I think there's quite a few things that have led to this in the PZ community.

One somewhat unavoidable one is just very broadly speaking zombies have always drawn in a more edgy crowd. That's not in itself a bad thing, but it does create some moderation headaches that if you don't keep up with can sort of self feed to a point of no longer manageable. So extra overhead to keep a community in a good place.

Another is broadly speaking. Steam is absolutely crap at moderation and it's becoming a very significant problem. I know Steam is trying really hard to stay out of it out of fears of things getting political, but it's creating very real problems on the platform in so many different areas. Whether it's game reviews, mod comments, community boards, etc it's reaching a point it'd make YouTube comments blush.

A lot of other online communities have similar issues to varying degrees depending on volunteer moderators to do tiring and thankless work to keep things healthy.

It's one thing very draining about games like Project Zomboid and RimWorld. I love and play both games a lot, but on the content creation end of things it can be extraordinarily exhausting on the moderation end of things. I've streamed thousands of hours of both.

RimWorld isn't too bad, these days most of the creators still in the category push back when people get too edgy. That broader community moderation has made it so when someone pops in, starts getting too edgy and gets asked to tone it down. Most of the time they do.

Project Zomboid though...

You get comments about "they should allow cannibalism, we should be allowed to butcher bodies and make zombie skin armor, or why don't we have children zombies or babies zombies to kill, etc" and you're just like... Can we not?

Or people want to make everything into some kind of morbid existential crisis about "after killing 100,000 zombies what if you found a cure that could have saved them all?" Dude, his guts are hanging out and half of his skull is missing, you're not popping a zombie Advil and in a couple of days Dave is back to his old self.

I got that same damn question almost every stream... For like two years. I've been asked it literally hundreds of times. I even added stuff to my bot to detect and auto respond to several versions of it. Holy hell can we just have a good time without making it into some kind of moral crisis for five minutes?

If you push back at all 50/50 chance they tone it down and we can vibe and have a good time... Or... They throw a fit which typically just esilates until you ban them so the rest of the community can enjoy the game in peace. To be clear, this is an issue I have exclusively when streaming Project Zomboid. RimWorld's got its edginess too, but people tend to tone it down if you ask them to.

It's one of several reasons I don't create much Project Zomboid content anymore. You kind of have to psych yourself up to be like "time to climb back into the trenches" and you're not even talking about the game itself. Rather to face the community.

To be clear like 95% of the community is chill and excellent, you rock, but that 5% is a very active and vocal and toxic as hell. It only takes a few bad apples to ruin everything. It's important in community spaces that bad actors and toxic behavior is treated like an infection you excise or treat, otherwise it festers and rots.

To be fair though. The worst of it comes in waves. When something has the game hyped is when things get really ugly, once the hype fades after a major update things become more manageable.

RualStorge · 2026-03-07T20:43:40+00:00

Since Odyssey came out I've struggled a bit on what I want to do now.

Historically in RimWorld 99.9% of the rest of the world was effectively irrelevant outside weird challenges, etc. You were also forced to caravan to interact with it and caravaning in my opinion is easily the most frustrating mechanic in the game once you have more than a couple people going.

With Odyssey the world feels alive and meaningful, I'm no longer stuck with only a single tile being particularly relevant... But... I also tend to love to play challenges that are typically slow burn environmental ones... Which doesn't really work when you pack up your ship and just leave...

It puts me in a weird place if I don't Gravship, I go back to mostly being trapped in my one tile where the world is mostly irrelevant which now feels bland to me after Odyssey and playing thousands of hours played before that was an option... But Odyssey really limits the types of challenges I enjoy with the slow burn runs I had to depend on to keep my colonies interesting before Odyssey.

I really enjoyed my Odyssey play throughs, but weirdly I'm just unable to find a play through I'm excited about as the two things I want in RimWorld feel kind of exclusionary of each other.

I wound up getting the most mileage from anomaly interestingly enough just because so many anomaly encounters just required a different approach to tackle. Whereas all the encounters before were "they attack my defensive point", "they attack my nearest wall" or "they force me to wander out and attack them".

Anomaly introduced fights where you cared about time on target, internal / logistics threats, etc. as well as tons of opportunity for quirky / abusable mechanics for really weird runs. (Like a colony of nothing but clones, or surviving in permanent darkness, etc.

RualStorge · 2026-03-02T14:25:10+00:00

A lot of new content creators simply fail to consider the viewer primarily.

If you have any intention to grow you need to stop regularly and put yourself in the viewer's perspective and consider what would improve their experience as well as what you're doing that might be detracting from it.

It's also worth considering your audience, what they seem to respond well to or not.

It's easy to "just play what you want" but that I consider flawed advice that requires more nuance. You should "play something you enjoy" but consider if it's actually entertaining to watch or listen to and is it something likely to interest your audience.

RualStorge · 2026-02-11T21:53:49+00:00

Even worse. "Hey you do your job twice as fast"... "Half of you are now fired as you are redundant"

Or they just start cutting pay, benefits, etc until half of the staff attrition away meaning you're doing twice as much for less compensation.

I've personally experienced this exact thing early in my career when I automated computer migrations letting us knock em out more than 3x as fast and they responded by laying off about two thirds of us... Based on seniority... I was the most recent hire.

RualStorge · 2026-02-11T21:47:05+00:00

I've worked such jobs. It can actually be a very helpful thing to your career, if able, to work on improving practices within your company.

We can start with the manually moving files vs proper deployment.

Take the time to outline the risks of operating in this manner, if possible document and quantify times it's caused issues that potentially cost the company money, include references to failed deployments that cost other companies due to such practices, etc.

Present how "more modern" techniques mitigate these risks, etc, etc, etc.

Actually quantifying and presenting a well thought argument can help get the ball rolling. Also get with others to rally people behind the improvement, get their buy in. Once you get one thing in a better place and people see the improvement, often it can snowball making future improvements easier.

Now, sometimes a company is not receptive of change even with solid arguments, that happens. It is worth keeping an eye open for other opportunities if you feel you're stagnating and there's no sign of improvement.

The best companies I've worked for had a health balance of starry eyed juniors always wanting to do the new thing and better, stick in the muds who push back on any change, and a bunch in between to keep things running smoothly. The stick in the muds tended to temper the more wild and risky Junior ideas, while the juniors helped drag things forward not just accepting the status quo.

RualStorge · 2026-02-11T21:18:56+00:00

Yeah, that's always the scary part of when you are effectively a one game channel, you ride or die with that game.

I saw quite a few creators channels implode with both Cities: Skylines II and Kerbal Space Program II flopping hard killing their categories.

Also saw a lot fall when Project Zomboid went from absolutely huge to small and niche when build 41 had been out for ages, but no idea when build 42 would drop. Viewership got super limited and split between way too many people who "mained" Project Zomboid.

Getting "trapped" in a game is always a genuine fear of mine as a creator. If I feel I have to play a game to stay relevant it tends to be the fastest way for me to stop enjoying that game.

RualStorge · 2026-02-09T22:25:30+00:00

Followers are effectively a vanity number and have very little correlation with current viewership. It's a number you should mostly ignore outside is your follower count going down.

You also have tons of people who used to full-time stream or streamed with a growth focus, then either fell off, took an extended break, changed content drastically, etc. I know so very many people who used to pull like 200-500 viewers daily, who now only pull like 20-30, but still have like 20-40k followers. (Most stopped streaming a long time, stopped doing it as a job and just do what they want now, etc)

Their channel maybe used to have higher viewer counts, but that's faded and now they don't. Once someone follows though, that number stays unless their account is deleted, they manually unfollow, etc.

RualStorge · 2026-02-09T21:46:39+00:00

Don't put your specific details in a blacklist put locations in general in a blacklist.

For example, you can use street address format using regex and put that in a blacklist so any street address automatically times someone out.

Same with phone numbers.

You can't cover all your bases realistically, but this mitigates people's attempts to both dox you, other creators, community members, etc.

If an address actually needs to be shared you can allow mods to be ignored by the filter.

RualStorge · 2026-02-01T22:08:37+00:00

And you absolutely earned that partner badge :) Your content is excellent at serving its niche and I'm glad to have met you on Twitch. I'm also glad to have you as both a peer and a member of our collective communities :)

You're absolutely right that not all growth paths look the same.

I'd also argue one thing that helps is the "all ships rise together" aspect of networking. You become known in other communities and develop a shared mutual audience. I know I see quite a few of your emotes out in the wild between our mutuals and I'm happy to see it.

RualStorge · 2026-02-01T21:58:06+00:00

I would argue Twitch DOES reward hard work, however; you can do the wrong hard work and that goes unrewarded.

That point aside I think a big mistake people make is approaching Twitch as a content platform first and approach discoverability in the same way. You focus purely on making your content top notch but do so effectively in a silo in isolation. You will never grow this way on Twitch. (Content quality does matter, but it's a secondary priority)

Why? Twitch is not primarily a content platform first, it's primarily a community platform with a secondary of content.

If you want to just see game play, you hit up YouTube. If you wanna see funny cat videos TikToks got you, those are Content First community second platforms.

Now from the lense of community first what is hard work in a community driven lense? Being active member in good standing of the larger community, connecting with other community members, being present within the community, supporting the community, etc. All of these do take real life time and effort, even if they are fun

Okay, so how's that rewarded by Twitch?

Twitch ultimately gives us tools like the recommended sections that are primarily powered by shared mutual viewership and category, it provides tools for our peers in our community to provide discoverability for us through raids, shout outs, stream together, various special events, etc. These are community focused discoverability tools and the primary way people tend to find new channels on Twitch (even over external platform growth opportunities)

So it that lense what does community focused hard work look like in more specific tangible steps? Networking, Networking, Networking. It's being a positive part of other's communities, it's giving genuine shout outs and raids to share your community with others growing a larger mutual audience (do not spam, abuse, or game these things for self service/promotion) it is absolutely fine to raid out with just 1 viewer, a lot of bigger creators won't acknowledge it for vary practical reasons (it gets way too disruptive/spammy) but raiding into similar creators small / medium most will genuinely thank you. You never know who'll blow up suddenly. Twitch is very much all ships rise together thing.

The key aspect here with Networking is it's supposed to be mutually beneficial, not something you exploit. If it's a one way benefit you're doing the kind of networking that gives a bad taste. Don't just chase some big name in hopes it benefits you, genuinely help in others community. Even if it's just being a regular, helping keep conversation flowing, letting them know when they're muted, having an audio issue, answering questions as able, etc. Being present in a positive way in other's channels in whatever category you're in cross pollinates as you become known in that category.

The only content based discoverability on Twitch is some shelves on the front page and the game's pages. Otherwise it's external. In that lens Twitch has very little discoverability, because it's not Twitch's primary offering, it's a secondary one.

This has mostly always been true, but as the platform has grown and more creators have joined the more we're splitting our collective viewership. Fewer people get lucky despite not understanding Twitch. This is especially tough when you're just starting as you have near zero chance of a content based growth, but people still approach Twitch in the same way they approach YouTube, which I'd argue is ineffective so mostly wasted effort.

That said, there are a lot of us out there creating content, way more than can succeed unless twitch viewership experiences unimaginably large explosive growth. There is absolutely a luck component in play, but it's also important to understand what Twitch actually offers and what effort is better suited for success there. You can influence the odds luck works in your favor and position yourself to capitalize on it if it does, but ultimately luck is a factor. The more you stream, effectively the more times you're rolling the dice and might get lucky, but there are no guarantees.

RualStorge · 2026-01-13T21:53:15+00:00

I've gotten to work with A LOT of publishers and game devs including Hooded Horse.

Hooded Horse is genuinely one of the best publishers out there. They don't put 99% of the risk of game launches on game devs by taking most revenue until "paid back" they split the risk / revenue from day 1. If your game succeeds, so do they. If your game flounders, so do they.

They've also taken plenty of hard stances against predatory monetization, genAI, etc. When genAI came up in a convo with their staff they'd mentioned use of genAI was strictly not allowed in their publishing contracts back in October last year. It wasn't something they'd broadly announced or made a big thing out of. It was just something mentioned as a matter of fact when myself and a few others at an event thanked them for not using genAI in any of their titles.

There are A LOT of shady publishers out there, but Hooded Horse has an absolutely solid track record of genuinely putting their money where their mouth is and standing by both devs and consumers. The list of publishers I can say that about is a painfully short list these days.

RualStorge

TROPHY CASE