Twitch is making a big change to help streamers collaborate. The popular streaming platform is finally adding merged chats to multi-creator streams, fixing one of the biggest problems with the old Squad Stream feature.
A long-awaited update
Twitch has been trying to get multi-creator streams right since March 2019, when it introduced Squad Stream. This tool allowed up to four streamers to appear together in one broadcast, which seemed like a great idea for collaborations.
However, there was a major issue: Even though the streamers were sharing one stream, their chats stayed separate. Each streamer would focus on their own audience, making it hard to fully engage with the group.
In late 2023, Twitch retired Squad Stream because it wasn’t widely used, with less than 1% of Partner streams adopting it.
The new chat system
At this year’s TwitchCon, held from Sept. 20 to 22 in San Diego, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy announced that merged chats are finally coming to Stream Together. This change means that all viewers and streamers in a group stream will now share one chat.
“When we knock on these people’s door, we will all be in one chat stream,” Clancy said during his announcement.
Twitch also said that streamers will still be able to tell which messages come from their own community. Moderators from all the channels involved will also be able to work together to manage the chat.
This includes handling bans and timeouts, which will apply across all channels in the session. If a user is banned by one streamer, they won’t be able to comment in the group chat.
Flexible features for streamers
Streamers can leave a Stream Together session and take their chat back to their own channel. They also have the option to join a multi-creator stream without merging their chat if they prefer to keep it separate.
While the exact release date for this feature is unknown, Clancy said it will be available to all streamers sometime next week.