Over on Twitch, a Founders Badge can be a pretty rare sight. Reserved exclusively for the earliest subscribers to certain Twitch channels, it’s a sign to the rest of the streaming world that the owner of said badge has been a subscriber to a specific channel for a long time.
Getting one could mean a lot to diehard fans of specific streamers or channels, but it’s pretty tricky to get hold of without actually being an early subscriber. Luckily, Twitch has implemented some ways for Founders Badges to get passed down which can be beneficial for eager fans or the channels hoping to manage their Badges.
How to get the Twitch Founders Badge in 2023
As briefly mentioned above, the most surefire way to get hold of a Twitch Founders Badge yourself is to be one of the first people to subscribe to a channel. However, it can’t be just any channel.
A Founders Badge, which is pictured as a purple “1st” icon, will only show up next to the usernames of those who subscribe to either Affiliate or Partner channels.
For Affiliates, the first 10 Prime or paid subscribers to their channel are considered Founders, and for Partners it’s the first 25 Prime or paid subscribers.
If you don’t make it into either of those categories, you’re going to be out of luck. Unless, of course, Founders badges from your preferred channels happen to be revoked.
How to revoke and assign the Twitch Founders Badge in 2023
Twitch has given streamers the ultimate control over who gets to be considered a Founder on their channel thanks to the fact that streamers can revoke Founders Badges.
Streamers still technically do not have the ability to assign a Founders Badge to a specific user, but they can manipulate who is considered a Founder by going to the Insights portion of their Channel Analytics on their channel’s Creator Dashboard.
If streamers “Revoke” Founder status from one of their original subs, it will make the next oldest subscriber in line a Founder. This could be done because one of the original Founders has been largely inactive, causing trouble on the channel, or, of course, for any personal reason a streamer may have for redistributing their Founders Badges.
It’s worth noting that revoking someone’s Founders Badge status is irreversible, according to Twitch, and someone who has their Founders Badge revoked can’t become a Founder again in the future.
In order to remove a Founder, you simply need to click the trash can icon to the far right of the row with their Founder info on the Founders Badge Holders page.
After you remove someone as a Founder, the next eligible person will become a Founder. If you are an Affiliate, this will be your 11th subscriber chronologically. For Partners, it will be your 26th.
Shortly after it became possible for Founders Badges to be revoked, fans and streamers expressed some of their distaste for the idea. For some, there was an odd issue where, once the Founders Badge was revoked, the next person down the line would be notified that they now had a Founders Badge even if their badge was immediately revoked as well.
For some subscribers, the idea of being able to revoke Founders Badges at all has felt completely wrong. Over on a Twitch forum, plenty of users echoed the statement from user Perktown who said, “There should be no reason to revoke a founder’s badge. It belongs to those who were the first to subscribe. Otherwise, it has absolutely no meaning and should be removed altogether.”
In spite of this backlash, Streamers do currently have the ability to revoke their Founders Badges as they see fit.
