They don't. Their payouts leaked a couple years ago, of the thousands of streamers there's a few hundred that make minimum wage or better. This pattern holds true for YouTube, only fans, etc.

[–] fushuan@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's way more than a few hundred. What leaked was the twitch subscriber payout, which doesn't count all the money spent on bits. Then there's also sponsorships and youtube content.

I follow several Path of Exile streamers, and when that released they said that that was not the total payout. They usually do some video guides of builds for the game that, alongside twitch generates content for them. Then there's also sponsors for gaming rigs and other kind of stuff, sponsors to try new games... Maybe it's PoE specifically but even streamers that oscillate between 200-800, maybe 1k viewers when there's no other PoE streamer online earned more that minimum wage with just the twitch payout (given the country they live in ofc).

[–] lorty@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

For every streamer that makes minimum wage there are dozens that make so little they don't even get paid.

[–] fushuan@lemm.ee 0 points 2 months ago

It's still more than a few hundred. I don't remember how big the leaked doc was but it wasn't in the thousands, it was bigger. Your statement can be true while the statement of the one I responded to be incorrect at the same time.

I mean, you comment is true and refutes nothing I said.

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How often are those small streamers the only one though? Having times where you do almost ok aren't that great if you make nothing 30% of your streaming time.

[–] fushuan@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

Given that the leak was the annual earnings from subs your question is irrelevant since it shows that the total average amounts enough.