Twitch adds new paid chat feature to rival YouTube’s Super Chat

Twitch announced it’s testing a new monetization feature that allows chatters to pay for message priority, similar to YouTube Live.

Twitch has plenty of ways for streamers to monetize their own streams, including channel subscriptions and bit donations.

However, Twitch revealed it’s currently testing a new monetization feature that some YouTube Live viewers may find strikingly similar to Super Chats.

Twitch unveiled the Elevated Chat feature, which allows viewers to pay to have their chat messages remain at the top of a streamer’s chat for a certain period of time.

Twitch reveals Elevated Chat feature

The news came from the official Twitch Support Twitter account, which tweeted out that the platform is “experimenting with a new way for viewers to pay to support their favorite streamers.”

For now, Elevated Chat is only available for a select group of partners at the time of writing, though Twitch plans to roll this feature out sometime after testing ends “4 weeks starting at the end of September.”

Regarding Elevated Chat itself, viewers can make a one-time payment via the platform, similar to how donating bits works, that will pin their chat message to the top of the chat window.

Viewers will be able to choose from five different tiers, which will lengthen the message’s duration depending on the cost.

Twitch

Twitch’s current pricing scheme for the Elevated Chat feature.

Viewers can pay $5 at the lowest cost for their message to display for 30 seconds, while $100 will have their message linger for two and a half minutes.

Additionally, both the streamer and channel moderators will have control over Elevated Chats, should they need to ban or timeout viewers using the feature for unintended purposes.

Interestingly, Elevated chats will feature a 70/30 payment split between Twitch and its creators.

This is quite noteworthy, considering the company only recently made the announcement that all streamers would be subject to the new 50/50 payment split regardless of status.

Though Twitch has made it clear this “experiment” will last for four weeks, it’s unclear when exactly the Elevated Chat feature will be available for all partnered streamers.