Twitch To Start Selling Video Games This Spring

Twitch Prime, Twitch’s own version of Amazon Prime, likely signaled this inevitable move to sell games, given that it offered various benefits which included discounts on new release titles and free release-day delivery on games. Partnered streamers will get five percent of the sale originating on their channel, the company confirmed, while 70 percent goes to the game’s creator. According to Robin Fontaine, Product Marketing Manager of Ecommerce at Twitch, this is a natural step as people are used to checking games before buying them on Twitch. “To ensure everyone benefits, we’re also rewarding fans that take part in the program with Twitch Crates”.

Twitch is adding an e-commerce element to its game streaming platform.

Twitch said that Twitch Games Commerce will debut this Spring with games from Paradox Interactive, Ubisoft, Vlambeer, and other developers. Notably absent at the moment are other big names publishers like Activision, Square Enix, and Bandai Namco. When the program officially kicks off, only a select list of publishers and developers will participate.

Ubisoft is one of the many initial developers who will be using Twitch as a sales platform. This is going to be an entirely new revenue stream for the company and it’s going to share a cut of those sales with streamers. This enables yet another avenue for Amazon to cash in on the millions of people watching game streams on Twitch.

Twitch isn’t launching a typical game store like Steam, and selling will only occur via selected Streamer channels and the individual game pages. On top of that, any purchase over 5 bucks will get you a Twitch Crate, which will be contain randomly generated virtual goodies.

Purchases will require an Amazon account for payment, but it appears the games will be downloaded directly from Twitch, not Amazon.

The times are changing in the video game industry, as Twitch is becoming more than just a streaming service.