Game and In-Game Sales Discontinued - and so

[ca1hayan]

Hey guys, I am wondering if Buy Now buttons are discontinued, is there a potential possibility that Twitch will allow creating Extensions with the similar functionality? I would like to create an Extension that will be essentially a Buy This Game button - and when potential gamer will click it - it will lead him into an official game developer/publisher website, so he can purchase a game, while a portion of the revenue will be shared with Streamer. Thoughts?

[Dist]

Some key points from the Extension Guidelines:

3.4 No advertising or sponsorship content (static or dynamic) may be displayed in an extension.

An extension like you’re suggestion could be considered advertising for the sale of that game.

3.5 Encouraging or rewarding users for taking specific actions outside Twitch/Amazon properties must not be a principal use case of the extension.

Your extension idea is exactly that, sending users off-site to purchase a product.

4.3 Extensions may not transact or encourage the transacting of monetary exchange in relation to any non-Twitch/Amazon commerce instruments.

Again, this strictly prohibits what you want to do.

One thing that may still be allowed is if you send the user to an Amazon page selling the item, and if the link is one for the broadcasters Amazon Affiliate (or whatever their program is called) that would allow them to earn revenue from the sale through that link. This runs into the issue though that not all games are sold through Amazon, those that are may not always be the best price so not worth purchasing anyway (Lack of competitive pricing was one of the biggest downfalls of game sales through Twitch), limited options to reach a multi-national audience (Most users will only ever purchase from Amazon using their local site, so linking to the US Amazon site for example wont be useful to potential purchasers in the UK).

TL;DR An extension like you’re suggestion would likely never be allowed for both legal and practicality reasons.

[BarryCarlyon]

Also as posted here:

Game and In-game Sales Discontinued

Effective November 27, 2018 we are discontinuing the sale of games and in-game items via the “Buy Now” buttons shown on a streamer’s channel page. All game publishers participating in this program will be notified. Why are we making this change? While our goal was to provide viewers a way to easily support streamers by purchasing games and in-game items directly from Twitch, we found that this feature as implemented did not provide most streamers with significant additional revenue. We are disc…

While our goal was to provide viewers a way to easily support streamers by purchasing games and in-game items directly from Twitch, we found that this feature as implemented did not provide most streamers with significant additional revenue. We are discontinuing this feature to invest in other ways to help viewers obtain games and in-game items directly on Twitch while supporting streamers – including through Extensions 6 on Twitch like Amazon Blacksmith 10, which allows viewers to support streamers through purchases of games and other item

Most of it is moving to Blacksmith

[ca1hayan]

Thank you Dist and Barry for your insights and comprehensive feedback!