Twitch is adding a new animal category on the service called Animals, Aquariums, and Zoos.
The streaming platform is celebrating “Animal Week” this week, kicking off the festivities with the new animal category. “[The category is] an exciting way to elevate the importance of environmental and conservation issues facing these critters of varying sizes and origin.” said Twitch in a blog post announcing the news.
It continued to say, “We’re working with zoos, aquariums, and animal non-profits to elevate the animals, their conservation, and the restoration and conservation of the environment they need to thrive.” Twitch did not specify who it would be working with in the post.
The purpose of Animal Week isn’t just to highlight and celebrate the fluffy friends on the platform. They also want to point to conservation efforts that streamers are carrying out.
Twitch itself noted that animal streams have been placed in a variety of categories. The niche of animal live streams had to find a home in categories like ASMR, Just Chatting, or Travel & Outdoors before.
While it might be exploitative of animals in certain cases, it makes sense that Twitch are doing this. Animal content is constantly incredibly popular. A channel highlighted in the post, DashDucks, has over 260k followers. Animal live streams are here to stay, and Twitch wants to profit from it as much as they can. It even points out how you can feed the ducks in DashDucks using bits.
Twitch knows there’s money to be made here. And even if they’re working with nonprofits, earning money will always be their priority.
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Featured Image Credit: Twitch