My Life As A Gamer: No One Likes Ads, Twitch

Twitch decided that it hates customer good will. Today I got an email from them regarding changes to Twitch Prime (which I get as an Amazon Prime member).

As we have continued to add value to Twitch Prime, we have also re-evaluated some of the existing Twitch Prime benefits. As a result, universal ad-free viewing will no longer be part of Twitch Prime for new members, starting on September 14.

Let me make this crystal clear: Ads are the fucking DEVIL! They are a plague to be exterminated. They have no place, never have had a place, and never will have a place in viewing or listening. Like reading, they are for BEFORE and AFTER and not DURING.

So if you've shut off your ad-block, get ready and turn it on now. Oh wait, it gets better.

All other Twitch Prime benefits, like monthly channel subs, monthly games and loot, and chat badges are not changing. You can still get channel-specific ad-free viewing as part of Twitch Prime by using your monthly subscription token on a channel that has ad-free viewing for subscribers turned on. Plus, all Twitch viewers can get ad-free viewing across all channels by subscribing to Twitch Turbo. And with your Twitch Prime membership you can still take advantage of all the other Amazon Prime benefits, like free two-day shipping and access to Prime Video and Prime Music.*

This is horseshit. The reason for Prime is to kill the bullshit. Everything else is secondary to that and without this the value is gone. At least Amazon still remembers that the core of Prime (for Amazon) is free two-day shipping for all orders. Twitch forgot that the point of Prime is ad-free viewing across the site, and is riding on the fact that Prime is a derivative benefit to get away with this change. (You're paying for Amazon Prime, not Twitch Prime; the latter IS the former.)

Fuck this. Starve, Twitch. You're disposable, expendable, and fungible; the ad-blocks got ten feet taller. You will regret this.