COMMUNITY TRAIN, "Gift All" Experiment & More! | Patch Notes HIGHLIGHTS (Mar 2026)

Everybody, welcome to Patch Notes, the show where we get to go behind the scenes and learn about all the things that we are working here at DW John. I am John Brand, director of community, also known as Kawaii Guy. Well, John, it's great to do it with you. for those who uh of course I suspect most of y'all uh uh are familiar with John but um uh but this actually is his first time hosting patch notes so I know he kicked us off but I feel like I need to welcome John to patch not so many of you have known about combos uh which is an experiment that rallies together our communities to contribute with bits to unlock 3D explosions and showcases all across the uh service and we have a special guest I believe joining us for a conversation about combos. We got Mike Mitten here and I think y'all are all um familiar with Mike. Mike, go ahead and introduce yourself again. Hey everyone, good to see you at Twitch. I am Mike Minton. I'm the chief product officer at Twitch. Talk about the origin of this experiment. Like how did we get started with the the thought process be behind development of this? I mean we're always looking for more ways to help creators make money. I mean that's kind of a universal principle as it relates to our product development roadmap especially on the teams focused on that and then we've had this thesis that we continue to believe will um u come true in the end which is bits are have been amazing for cheering they work really well in extensions um as a way to drive fun and interactivity and so um we launched power-ups which was kind of a v1 of what we saw as a way to again just emphasize the fun and interactivity part in addition to obviously the creator support that they provide. And after we did the first PowerUps launch, we we had an idea of making them more interactive through tapping and that led us to this what was originally one tap but became combos as a product idea that we wanted to really explore. So why don't you get into the details of what we observed um during the experiment, Mike? Yeah, we saw some, you know, really positive things where like, for example, with the pill mechanic where you would see the combos um multiple combos being used at the same time and continue to increment. It did result in people, you know, joining in, joining in on the spend. But the other thing that we saw that maybe wasn't as positive is people just didn't really get the leveling system and they didn't feel like the progression was rewarding in a way that um was meaningful for the community. And then uh you know as these things go we saw a lot of early engagement every time we do something new. The community does tend to like try it out and test it. But our bar we're always looking for when we're launching new products is growing sustained usage and we didn't didn't actually see that. One of the core problems we heard from streamers continuously that we really tried to solve for was they were struggling to notice it was happening and react to them in in real time. Uh the other thing we learned was it's really hard when especially when you want people to jump in. The act of going to buy bits is has a a lot of friction. And so by the time people would say, "Hey, there's a combo going on. I want to jump in and get in on that." Made it through the purchase flow, got their bits balance, it really um uh was over. So a lot of the usage came from people that had an existing bits balance. Um, as as a result, we um saw some really fun things with horse LOL as an example where we had, you know, some really fun new um uh powerup type experiences, new combos, new animations that people like, they would try it. Um, again, didn't sustain. And then as we looked at the usage, what we saw wasn't what we hoped for was activating more payers, people that maybe hadn't spent before, but would want to jump in on the funding activity. that didn't happen. We saw people that maybe were cheering consistently. Instead of cheering a hundred, maybe they participated in a few combos instead. So, we weren't seeing that really incremental increased usage um that we were hoping for. Yeah, there's so many variables that we not only are taking in from our side, from our observations, but also when it looks at the behavior of the broadcaster, what is exciting for them for their streams and how they operate, how the viewer typically responds, obviously speaking to that real-time engagement aspect of if a combo is happening and there's going to be a flow that takes me through and I may miss out on the moment, it removes me from that experience that makes honestly like Twitch uh so great, which is the ability for us to conversate in real time. Um, so how are we looking forward with this experiment, Mike? Like what is the plan moving forward for combos? Um, we decided we're not going to move forward with combos experiment in a way that would make it into a durable long-running product, but we are going to take away some of the things that really did work and integrate them where it makes sense and things like hype train, as Dan alluded to, continuing to figure out how we u make bits um a more persistent part of the user experience. um encourage folks to carry a balance so that we can have more of these fun fast interactive experiences without having to think about you know going to buy bits before participating. All right. Why don't you just summarize some of the learnings um you know crisply and and kind of how we integrated going forward. Yeah, I think the the the four things I would point at is that that kind of that pillpoint, that onscreen prompt. I think that worked really well. The chat notices of course that are always work well. Those will get incorporated into things like cheering and hype train. Um I think the other durable learning here is on that spectacle piece. I touched on this. Um one of the most powerful things about Twitch that helps Twitch work so well is the power we give the broadcaster via OBS or the streamer via OBS. And I think um it when we do spectacle, the best place for spectacle is to be part of an alert system that streamers can configure and control um when they're in that type of OBS environment. Now, if they're on mobile or something else, and of course that'll be a different solution, but I think that's a key part as it relates to future product development. Some of the things that did work well worked well on mobile as it relates that tap-based interaction. So you will see us evolve cheering to have more of those type of a reduce the friction but more tap based interactions on mobile. Uh it sounds like we are ending that experiment on which date again? Uh March 31st? So as we do from time to time um big things like September but then on a more regular basis typically quarterly or so um we'll do a sitewide sitewide um and this discount is 35% off gift sub bundles of five or more. It is a shared discount. And so the reason we want to make sure we announce this is that creators that or streamers that don't want to participate, they can opt out of this in the dashboard. Um or if you really love these things and you want to participate, it's good time to think about planning a special stream. Um reminding your community about how important their support is and uh yeah, read the read the website, blog post, tweet, whatever we did, and I'm sure there are terms that'll apply. So, we are working on um a new type of rare hype train uh formerly known as scam train, but that that name seems to have been lost over the years. I know when we first launched it, that was the moniker that the community loved and then they decided it really did work. Anyway, back to our story. So, we're launching a community train at Want that that handle to die. Okay. Well, I I it really just points out sometimes we're going to be misunderstood for a while and it'll make sense. But anyway, at level two, the train starts rewarding viewers who didn't directly participate to the hype train with hype train emote rewards anyway. So, the community, people that are there participating in the channel, can get rewards from a hype train, even if they don't want to or can't participate in the actual hype train directly. So, the higher level community um the higher the level, the more non-participating viewers get those hype train emote rewards. It's in testing. You may see it in some places. Um, it won't be available in all channels. We do we, as we talked about earlier, we do the testing, see what works, and then decide what to keep around um, in a long long-term fashion. So, obviously, we hear lots of uh, messages obviously on social media or even in conversations with many of you about the gifting ability on channel. So, this is inspired by a lot of the conversations that we've had with you all out there, and we're calling it gift mall, uh, which is a launched experimental feature that allows users to purchase a gift sub for every eligible follower currently watching a channel up to the current maximum of,000 subs. So, what that means is the eligible viewers that would be open to receiving it are individuals who are following the channel, but are also not currently subbed and they're viewing in this experience. So, there's an ability to drop Sublove on all of these individuals. Again, it's experimental. You're not going to see it all the time. Not all users are going to see it. There's a lot of complication here. Um, again, without getting into too much of the details about making sure that this is actually a revenue optimizing feature for streamers and, you know, for streamers that rely heavily on ad revenue, there's a impact of channel subscriptions. So, this is a I'm again I'm really excited about the feature, but there's a lot of things that we need to think through here to make sure that it's good for streamers and works really well for the community. So, um but again, I think it's it's a good example of something we've built born out of the inspiration from the community. It's our job to make sure that when you look at all the factors that this ends up working better for the streamer um that are participating. you have to think about how it affects future gift subbing, future subbing, all sorts of things. And so you can't just about I know it's been a really fun feature. Um but you can't just look in the moment, you know, you need to make sure that it doesn't discourage people from gifting later in the stream, right? Because they gift and then or the next day or less or whatever. So, um, we're going to be looking at this very closely and then rolling it out further if it ends up driving more money for our streamers. From, uh, what I have learned, which I'm very excited about, we've rolled out several updates to mobile, uh, to make it easier to go live on broadcast and manage the stream directly. Now, Dan is our resident IRL broadcaster. So, Dan, could you talk a little bit about what updates we've made? So, you may have already noticed, but disconnect protection is now available on mobile. Um, and we've lengthened the time of disconnect protection. So, this means if your sales service goes down, you don't lose the stream. Um, also with the ability to background the app while streaming. Um, we've also added new new tools to help you stay connected with your viewers while live. You can uh view and resize chat directly on stream. I think this is a real benefit because how big the chat you want to get when you're holding the phone. Um, you can moderate the messages with a single tap. So, let's see. You can also check follows, subs, and other activity without leaving the stream. So, you don't have to feel a need to switch over, but if you're using the Twitch mobile app, and a lot of this is targeted for new streamers that are coming to the platform to make it simple to them to just click and go live. This is huge. Honestly, we've been getting so much feedback around the mobile app and the experience for broadcasters and to make it more efficient for our flows. Uh, obviously, once again, continue that feedback coming in on our front. These updates are huge for us. Uh, just so everybody knows, these updates are now available on iOS devices and I believe Android is coming soon. Put the little coming soon. That's what I have. That's what I have. Yeah, we got we got to get it going faster. You see us engineers, Dan needs that update. So, make it happen. Uh, but this is uh a lot of great stuff that's in the process for mobile and I'm excited to see where we go in the future.