To aid the growth of new streamers on their platform, and to reward long-standing members of a Twitch community, Twitch has introduced a brand new viewer badge for viewers of Affiliated or Partnered streams.
First. A simple word that’s become a long-running joke on any website with a comment or chat section. For those who don’t use it mockingly, it’s a way to declare to the world that you, before anyone else, witnessed that piece of content with your eyeballs first.
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But Twitch is adding a new feature for those who want to label themselves as first in a different way, in an attempt to help smaller and just-starting streamers have additional ways to build and maintain their viewer base. It’s called the Founders Badge.
:loudspeaker: First!
We know how special those who support you are. Now the founding Subscribers of your channel can rep that status with their new Founder’s Badge! The first 10 Subs for Affiliates and 25 Subs for Partners will receive this new badge.
:books:: https://t.co/sZYKOnsmMU pic.twitter.com/lgkoodNrXL
— Twitch Support (@TwitchSupport) October 10, 2019
The Founders Badge is an all-new viewer badge that’s now added to the growing repertoire of viewer badges, which include cheering chat badges, subscriber badges, sub gifting badges, the Twitch prime icon, and many more.
According to Twitch, the Founders Badge “is a subscriber badge that will be exclusively available to the first 10 prime or paid subscribers of Affiliate channels and first 25 prime or paid subscribers of Partner channels.”
For streamers, anyone who is an Affiliated or Partnered streamer will have the Founders Badge enabled already, and if they advance from Affiliate to Partner, then the additional 15 Founders Badges will be added to the corresponding viewers automatically.
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For viewers, they can choose to display the Founders Badge or their Sub Loyalty Badge if they so choose. If they no longer subscribe to a channel, viewers do not lose their Founders Badge for that channel but will be unable to display it until they resub. Viewers will only lose the Founders Badge if they delete their account or receive a site-wide ban. Viewers who were gifted subscriptions will not qualify for the Founders Badge, only paid or Prime subs will be eligible.
Many Twitch fans have expressed a lot of excitement for the new badge. Twitch partner and full-time streamer summit1g even asked for a version for “first chatters” as well, one that designates which viewers were the first the join the stream for that day.
Gimme a diff version of this for first chatters as well.
— summit1g (@summit1g) October 10, 2019
Twitch streamer Pokket brought up one potential issue though. Streamers that took extended breaks from streaming may have lost most of their founding subs and may see little to none of their founders in the chat today. Those former subscribers will receive emails that they’ve received the Founders Badge, but there’s no guarantee that they will re-sub.
Regardless, congratulations to the new Founders. You’re first forever.