Twitch reportedly scrapping popular Just Chatting feature in major change

Live streaming platform Twitch will supposedly be removing the popular rerun feature which allows streamers to rebroadcast an old stream while they’re offline.

Reruns have been a part of Twitch for a long time. Streamers can pick and choose to rebroadcast an old live-stream VOD – allowing them to grow an audience even when they’re sleeping or on holiday.

While there’s of course no real-time interaction when watching a rerun broadcast, new viewers can get a taste of what to expect from the streamer while watching. However, it looks like the Amazon-owned platform will be removing the popular rerun feature altogether in the future.

In a tweet on May 21, journalist Zach Bussey reported that Twitch is looking to remove the feature which is popular in the Just Chatting section of the site. “Looking like Twitch is going to announce the removal of the ‘rerun’ feature,” Bussey announced.

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However, he continued by prefacing that he’s unsure of when the platform will be removing it. “Unsure when exactly,” he said.

While reruns can be useful for streamers to grow their audience, they aren’t exactly sad to see it go. “This is great news the amount of people using reruns is so crazy,” responded Twitch streamer AllFunNGamez. 

“There was a huge issue with games that supported drops where people would do reruns and they would count towards it. I am happy they are removing this feature. Twitch is about being live,” he added.

“It was one of the worst features anyways,” said another streamer. “I don’t think it offered anything decent and the ability to cheat the system to those that could go on top of the list.”

Recently, the Amazon-owned streaming platform has come under fire for the changes they’re considering implementing in the future, with those impacting partnerships and subscription payouts.