Twitch CEO reveals plan for “artistic nudity” to return in bizarre VR chat interview

Twitch has been in a bizarre spot over the past few weeks as metas rapidly shift on the platform, and CEO Dan Clancy took to VR chat dressed as Gandalf the White to answer some hard-hitting questions about the platform. Ultimately, he revealed he wants artistic nudity to return to Twitch once they have the infrastructure to support it.

As a platform, Twitch‘s evolution has often brought out new genres of streaming that have really pushed the medium forward. IRL streams are standard now, but non-gaming streams used to be ban-worthy on Twitch.

Twitch seems to want to embrace something that was previously ban-worthy once again by allowing “artistic nudity” and other more explicit forms of content on the platform, and, though they had to roll back the recent TOS changes, Clancy hasn’t given up on this type of content.

To answer some questions on the recent meta developments around explicit content, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy donned a Gandalf the White avatar and spoke with VR Chat and GTA RP streamer roflgator about recent times on the platform. And, while he was sad about the way rolling out artistic nudity went, he’s got plans to potentially bring it back once Twitch can better support that kind of content.

Twitch CEO ‘Gandalf’ explains why “artistic nudity” was rolled back

The setting of this interview was certainly a bit unorthodox, though it’s worth mentioning the community on a game like VR Chat is massive. Not only that but communities within VR Chat that stream on Twitch are heavily affected by artistic nudity policies due to some character models that leave a bit less to the imagination.

Clancy took some of the questions about his platform head-on and revealed that artistic nudity had to be rolled back largely because their platform didn’t have the infrastructure to support it, not because any of the streamers were doing anything wrong.

“Initially, we were doing it because there were a lot of artists that expressed the desire to use the human form as part of their artistic expression,” Clancy explained. However, he felt as if this art “overran” the art category.

With different infrastructure, Twitch could create a way to filter out streams with more adult-oriented content. Clancy aims to lay down that infrastructure.

“In a perfect world, A). we could blur thumbnails and B). a user could say, ‘I am not interested in seeing sexually themed content.’ So then, they click the checkmark and, suddenly, they go to the art section, and anything labeled sexually themed, they don’t see. So now, they can have the experience they want. In general, this would be good for the site. We just don’t have that yet,” Clancy explained.

“It’s something we will build, but engineering takes time. So, we needed to roll back the change. Not because we necessarily find that all of the stuff is wrong or something like that, it’s just our product doesn’t work well to handle it. By the way, we already have this problem if you look at the ASMR category.”

He pointed out that much of the ASMR category has devolved into sexually oriented content, and that finding ways to moderate stuff like that is a priority as well.

So, before Twitch can bring back artistic nudity, they’d have to create infrastructure to support it. But Clancy also feels that there’s “nothing wrong” with content of this nature as long as users have ways to filter it out if they don’t want to see it.

Clancy was also adamant that what they’re trying to bring onto the platform has to remain artistic in nature, and that things like lap dances that get into what he termed “simulated sexual activity” are too far even if erotic dance could be considered an art form.

The interview wrapped up as roflgator showed Dan Clancy what VR Chat was all about. One of roflgator’s friends grabbed a dancer to perform for him, someone with an avatar who was essentially topless with a fishnet shirt and pasties.

Nonetheless, Clancy seemed down for the adventure and was toured around several worlds in VR Chat as he approached the niche part of Twitch with an open mind.

roflgator

The stream concluded with Dan Clancy doing a live music performance in VR, something he’s passionate about in his own music streams on Twitch, before leaving.

roflgator and Clancy spent a few hours together in VR Chat, and if you want to watch the full VoD including an interview that lasted nearly an hour, you can watch it here.