Streaming platform Twitch has announced and launched Drop Ins, a new feature "designed to make it easier for people to just 'drop in' on each other while they are streaming." The collaboration tool allows streamers to "knock" on other live streamers, who will then receive a notification visible only to them, which if accepted will start a joint stream. The tool is designed with multiple collaborators in mind, though Twitch's announcement doesn't detail what the upper limit on participants is.
"Planning a collaboration can be challenging," writes Twitch CEO Dan Clancy, outlining why the platform thinks this feature makes sense. "First you need to reach out to someone to see if they want to collaborate and then you need to find a time that works for both of you. For longer collaborations, this might be worth the effort, but for short collaborations there is sometimes too much overhead to make it feel worthwhile. Also, part of the magic of Twitch is that it is improvisational and you simply don’t know what you are going to get. You don’t want to have to plan out everything that you are going to do."
The announcement, however, does not appear to have gone down well with a sizeable proportion of the target audience. This is almost entirely because Twitch has done the typical big tech thing of surprise launching a new feature that doesn't allow users to simply opt out. Drops Ins do give streamers a considerable degree of control over who can "knock" on their streams (the options are "All Streamers, Affiliates and Partners, Partners only, People you Follow or your Favorites list"), and the feature can be paused on any individual stream, but you can't just say no thanks and have it permanently disabled.
"This update is awful," says streamer Zach Bussey. "They're forcing it on everyone, and its permission structure, by default, allows anyone to call. You can't turn it off; you can only pause for '1 Hour' OR 'This Stream.' Turns back on every stream."
Popular streamer Tyler Oakley said the same thing as many smaller creators: "please allow streamers to opt out of this, this is so unnecessarily forced."
There are some claims about the feature being dangerous, which seem a mite exaggerated given that Twitch has given streamers control over who can "knock" on their streams, but by far the most consistent complaint is about the feature being pushed on streamers without the option to turn it off.
"Knock knock! Who's there?" writes ShyLily. "Unwanted feature!"
The backlash to the launch of Drop Ins is one of those things where I'm just amazed no-one at Twitch saw it coming. The reasoning behind Drop Ins is good: Streamers increasingly band together, and watching your favourites go in for the odd collaboration and play games together can be great. Twitch is making this much easier, and no doubt the majority will happily use the feature to good effect.
But solo streams still feel like the bread-and-butter, and there will always be a contingent of streamers who don't want to collaborate. Making them opt out in every single stream, rather than just turning it off in settings, just feels overbearing and annoying. Drop Ins will no doubt become an important and popular part of the platform: but Twitch really should let individuals drop out.
