Kick was launched as a vying direct competitor to Twitch, with a promising 95/5 revenue split and fewer restrictions on gambling streams. It’s worth noting that Twitch has a 50/50 revenue split and a total ban on gambling, which many streamers are not happy about.
With the arrival of Kick, streamers saw a potential livestreaming platform with better pay and freedom to stream gambling. Now, it appears the streaming platform is changing course.
Kick lowers exposure to gambling-related content
We're rolling out some extra view count protection on @KickStreaming.
— Eddie (@StakeEddie) June 30, 2023
This should help combat view count manipulation. It will also help solve some issues surrounding follow/chat bots.
Rest assured the community is still growing & we're staying committed to ensuring we…
Six months after its launch, Kick realized that its focus on gambling content was a controversial choice, having received constant criticism for how rampant gambling is on the platform. On June 30, Eddie Craven, owner of Kick and co-founder of Stake, announced that Kick is removing “unnecessary” exposure to gambling-related content throughout its recommended formulas.
“We’ll also be adding the ability to toggle off all gambling-related streams, among other certain categories viewers wish not to be exposed to. Viewer experience is equally as important to us as creators,” Craven tweeted.
Kick added two toggles where users could block controversial categories such as gambling, tubs/pools, and bikini streams. The platform promoted this update through a meme involving HasanAbi, a Twitch streamer.
Choose your adventure ✅ pic.twitter.com/fjuDbsh4Wl
— Kick.com (@KickStreaming) July 4, 2023
Kick fixes issues on viewer count
In addition to the exposure update, Kick will also implement additional measures to combat view manipulation. The primary concern is the tabbing, which results in an artificial view count of the stream. Kick streamers can no longer open the stream in multiple tabs, and a level of activity is maintained in each channel for the tabs to count as a view.
In a tweet, Craven said, “Rest assured, the community is still growing and we’re staying committed to ensuring we maintain a fair landscape for creators.”
In other news, the platform has increased to 12 million sign-ups in just a month with $5 million in subscriptions. This shows that despite its criticisms, Kick was still experiencing rapid growth. However, even with the lower exposure to gambling streams, Kick still maintains strong ties with entities backed by gambling. We will have to wait and see if these changes will help the platform increase its growth even more.