User Donations in Online Social Game Streaming: The Case of Paid Subscription in Twitch.tv

Abstract

Online social game streaming has proliferated with the rise of communities like Twitch.tv and Youtube Gaming. Beyond entertainment, they become vibrant communities for streamers and viewers to interact and support each other, and the phenomenon of user donation is rapidly emerging in these communities. In this article, we provide a publicly available (anonymized) dataset and conduct an in-depth analysis of user donations (made through paid user subscriptions) on Twitch, a worldwide popular online social game streaming community. Based on information of over 2.77 million subscription relationships that worth in total over 14.1 million US dollars, we reveal the scale and diversity of paid user subscriptions received and made. Among other results, we find that (i) the paid subscriptions received and made are highly skewed, (ii) majority streamers are casual streamers who only come online occasionally, while regular streamers often stream in multiple categories and receive more paid subscriptions, in total as well as per streaming hour, (iii) a considerable amount of viewers on Twitch subscribe to multiple streamers and most viewers support their streamers moderately while a small amount of devoted fans are willing to pay more and longer. Our discussions and finding shed lights on how to maintain community prosperity and provide significant reference for the system design.