Twitch launched a new feature today that should give its users far more control over their original content.
Called Clips, the feature lets viewers press a button to create a 30-second video for sharing on social media. This is essentially the same service as other third-party apps like Oddshot and LiveCap offer—with one key difference, however. Because the feature is implemented in the Twitch platform itself, the product links back to the original broadcaster and ensures they get the views.
Traffic on third-party video clips goes to the services themselves, rather than the content creators, and that’s occasionally led to controversy. The r/hearthstone subreddit briefly debated banning Oddshot last year after popular stream Andrey “Reynad” Yanyuk alleged that the service was essentially built “on stealing streamers’ content.”
Clips also features the Twitch ID of whomever captures the video, so they can be credited for “capturing the perfect moment,” Twitch said in the announcement.
Clip captures 25 seconds prior to, and five seconds after, the button is pressed. The clips are then saved as shared links. If a broadcaster is offline, the viewer can watch the recorded broadcast from where the clip left off.
Clips is currently live on Partnered channels for “select viewers” and will roll out to everyone else in the next few weeks.
