Twitch announced today that Affiliates now have a new maximum of nine emote slots instead of the previous maximum of five. In addition to the nine regular emotes, Affiliates will also be able to upload five animated emotes, bringing the maximum amount of Tier One Subscriber emotes for Affiliates to 14.
This is big news for long-time Twitch Affiliates who may struggle to compete with Twitch Partners for viewer subscriptions. Twitch Partners have always had significantly more perks to offer their subscribers, so Twitch’s announcement today helps Affiliates provide more value to their communities.
In the coming weeks, Twitch will roll out the animated emotes features to all Affiliates. Many will see the feature available immediately, but streamers shouldn’t panic if the feature isn’t yet viewable under the Creator Dashboard’s “Emotes” section.
In order for Affiliates to unlock all 14 possible Tier One emote slots, they will have to fulfill Twitch’s slightly confusing requirements for Subscriber Points. Once an Affiliate acquires 50 Subscriber Points in any given month, they will have unlocked the maximum of nine regular emote slots and five animated emote slots for their channel. Keep in mind that this doesn’t include the slots for Tier Two and Three emotes, Bits emotes, or Follower emotes.
But Affiliates aren’t alone—Twitch Partners will also see more emote slots appear on their Creator Dashboards, too. With this emote update, all Partners will receive an additional five regular emote slots for Tier Two and Tier Three subscribers. This is a substantial boost to Twitch’s Tier Two and Three subscriptions, which cost $9.99 and $24.99, respectively.
The reason for this update is because Twitch is aware that its users love the platform’s emote culture and a wide variety of emotes available. The company considers emotes to be the “language of the Twitch community.” Some might argue this is the reason Twitch has continued to maintain its high viewership despite competitor YouTube Gaming’s recent feature announcements and acquisition of streaming icons like TimTheTatman, Dr.Lupo, and CouRageJD.
Twitch remains a stronghold of internet culture and more emotes mean more opportunities for personalization, community-building, and memes.
