Twitch criticised for pulling ad-free viewing from Twitch Prime

Twitch has been roundly criticised for pulling ad-free viewing from Twitch Prime.

Twitch Prime, which costs £7.99 a month or £79 a year, offers a raft of benefits, including in-game loot, free games, monthly channel subs and exclusive content. But for many the main reason to subscribe was for an ad-free experience.

In a blog post, Twitch said universal ad-free viewing will no longer be a part of Twitch Prime for new members from 14th September. If you have a monthly subscription already, you'll continue to get ad-free viewing until 15th October.

After then, to get ad-free viewing you have to pay more for Twitch Turbo, or use your monthly channel sub to get an ad-free experience on a specific channel.

Twitch users have criticised the decision, accusing the service and its parent company Amazon of "corporate greed".

"As I see it, the only way I can be sure this cycle doesn't repeat every couple of years is by cancelling my subscription now," wrote redditor Habbeighty-four on r/Twitch.

"I'd honestly prefer to have ad-free viewing instead of the free games," said ilovecheese2. "Not like I use the Twitch Launcher anyway so the games are almost always useless to me."

"Stop giving me crappy free games I won't ever use," said darklyte. "You can't pile on 'crap' call it free and take away the reason we all subscribe to the service. Seriously reconsidering my Prime subscription now."

Twitch said it added advertising to Twitch Prime to help streamers.

"Advertising is an important source of support for the creators who make Twitch possible," Twitch said.

"This change will strengthen and expand that advertising opportunity for creators so they can get more support from their viewers for doing what they love. We want Twitch to remain a place where anyone can enjoy one-of-a-kind interactive entertainment, and ads allow us to continue making Twitch the best place for creators to build communities around the things they love and make money doing it."

But this explanation fell on deaf ears. "This just looks like corporate greed being sold as looking out for the little guy," one user said. "The outrage is justified."

"Rip Twitch Prime," said TheEjoty, "just gonna subscribe like normal to people and that's that."

"It's painfully obvious that the real reason is that the profit from Twitch Prime isn't enough to justify killing ad revenue and everyone knows it," wrote Medium user Tom.

"If this was just to benefit creators then you could have introduced something that benefits creators without inconveniencing the consumer."