Twitch Introduces Cheers Microtransactions

Twitch released a feature that allows users to celebrate community moments inside their chats. The new entry is named Cheers and will enable people to sustain their favorite streamers financially.

Cheers take the form of a chat message that includes animated emoticons that a user can buy. They can be used by themselves or cumulated or in any other design a user might like.

In order to show their support, a user must type “cheer” in the chat and a number. Twitch will automatically add a Cheer Chat Badge for the channel in question.

The Cheer Chat badge will help users identify the regulars in new channels. Their values range from 1 to 100,000, having color labels going from gray to bright yellow.

Cheers are available for a fee. To buy them, a person needs to click the Bits icon from the chat message window, next to the emote button.

Bits emotes go from 1 to 10,000, the most expensive one displaying a more sophisticated animation of a multi-edge red star, which is quite amusing.

Twitch says that the animated emotes will draw attention on the most important messages in the chat.

The feature will be launched in beta version, and the developer promises to add more and more content and actions in the months to come.

As Cheering is built inside the chat, the streamers and moderators will quickly verify if the actions and messages in their channel are displaying a correct image to their community.

The list of supported channels includes Summit1G, who shows a Counter-Strike streamer, ProfessorBroman, who is a teacher for other players, KingGothalion, who plays Looter Shooter games, and lirik, a gamer that streams almost daily for seven hours.

The eligible broadcasters will receive a revenue share from the Bits used to Cheer for them.

Bits can be bought trough Amazon Payments, and the developers are working on adding new payment methods for the feature.

Cheers can be used even by people who are not channel subscribers. The number of Cheers is unlimited; however, each Cheer costs Bits which in turn cost real money, so users will have to be careful with whom they would spend their Cheers to show their support.

However, the small cost of emotes permits users to spend their Cheers in a fairly relaxed manner that would also encourage to show support for streamers.

Image Source: YouTube