Twitch stars Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel and Kai Cenat are on the top of their platform, with tens of thousands tuning in every day. Those crowds need to be managed by moderators, but the duo have both professed to not paying their mods for one reason.
Behind every Twitch streamer, especially the big ones, are a team of moderators who keep everything in check. They sometimes update the titles and descriptions of a stream while the streamer is playing, or do some behind-the-scenes work, but primarily their role is keeping chat clean.
While Twitch does have some automatic moderation on certain phrases and spam that it can detect, it’s up to the moderators to put in legwork in keeping order somewhat.
Some top streamers have spoken about paying their moderators in the past. However Twitch stars xQc and Kai Cenat don’t fall into that category. The platform’s two biggest names in the Western space right now don’t pay their moderators, explaining why on stream.
“I don’t want it to become weird,” xQc claimed. “There’s creative reasons. There wouldn’t be that much of a set back to pay them, but if it became weird, it could become dramatic.
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“Because they watch out of passion, and if you have a lot of mods it’s not a lot of work for each, so I don’t want it to become weird.”
After asking the question of xQc, Cenat reacted by saying “y’all volunteering to do sh*t for free.” There is a secondary reason beyond things becoming weird though: neither streamer wants their moderators in it for just the money.
“What if they don’t like the channel anymore,” xQc asked. “They don’t like modding, they don’t like me, but they’re doing it for the money? Then it becomes kind of weird because I’m trying to drive something creative but then they hate it so it goes against the whole fabric of it.”
The opinion has divided fans, with some believing moderators of big streamers are deserving of some compensation. However it’ll take more than that to get xQc and Kai Cenat to budge on the issue.