Meta’s Twitch Competitor Cuts Contracts With Gaming Creators

Attendees at the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles in June 2018. Photo by Bloomberg.

Since 2018, Meta Platforms has paid videogamers to stream their play on Facebook’s gaming service, its alternative to Twitch. Now, in a new era of austerity, Meta is cutting back on those payments.

Facebook Gaming in the second half of last year dropped its contracts with at least 200 creators that paid them to spend time streaming on the web service, according to two people with direct knowledge of the deals. And its two-year, $10 million fund that paid Black gamers to stream ended in December, a Meta spokesperson confirmed.

These financial incentives helped make Facebook Gaming the second most popular streaming service last year by hours watched, just ahead of the similarly sized YouTube Gaming, according to data from StreamElements. Reduced cash incentives could make it less likely streamers stay on the platform. Meta’s decision to cut back on its streaming contracts comes amid a broader effort to slash costs, including with mass layoffs.