2XKO and Twitch Receive Criticism Over Exploitative "Sponsorship" Deal

2XKO just recently hit full release, and yet the game already has a history of receiving some pretty harsh feedback, from the early days of alpha tests and up to now.

However, the newest controversy comes from a rather unexpected angle. On Twitter, the Australian Twitch streamer BloodyDrongo offered criticism over the latest Twitch x 2XKO "sponsorship" deal.

The sponsorship is in quotes because in reality, it's anything but. Some people responding to BloodyDrongo's post were confused as to what the issue seems to be. If you only look at the surface level, the deal might even seem good. You stream the game, and if things go well, you get bonus sub, what's there to complain about?

Well, the problem is exactly that word in quotes. This isn't simply a bonus for people who were already streaming the game. Twitch specifically presents as sponsorship, which typically entails tangible compensation for people who choose to take that sponsorship, similar to the ever present sponsored videos you might find on YouTube.

In this case, however, Riot and Twitch are effectively asking people to go out of their way and stream the game for free, and the only way for them to get paid, is if the streamer's community drops a significant amount of subscriptions. Specifically, an extra bonus sub for every 5 subs from the community.

Assuming each sub is $5 bucks, you would need to receive 200 subs for Twitch to spend $100 USD on this "sponsorship" and given the Twitch cuts, you would only receive a half of that. This should make it easy to see that the whole sponsorship is effectively an invitation for people to stream the game for free.

This invitation was also actively being spammed to countless creators through both emails and Twitch's own notification system. 

The massive wave of criticism eventually reached Riot and prompted a response from their Global Head of Player Community – Erin "Aureylian" Wayne. She acknowledged the pain points brought forward by the community, and reassured everyone that going forward, they will find a better solution and avoid the sponsorship label.

In the past, Riot has generally done a decent job of using Twitch integrations in a positive way, which benefitted both the company and the streamers, so while the results of this remain to be seen, there is a reason to believe that Riot will offer better opportunities to people promoting their titles in the future.