Twitch to Introduce Animated Emotes | Game Rant
Streaming website Twitch will soon be bringing animated emotes to the chat box, allowing more emote possibilities than ever before. Alongside this announcement comes a slew of other changes, including an updated emote management system and a new "follower" tier of emote access.
Twitch has long included the ability to set custom emotes for different subscription tiers, and animated emotes are simply a logical expansion of the existing system. The other new changes, however, are also important for viewers and streamers alike, allowing even more customization and potential rewards for subscribers.
The ability to use animated emotes will be available for Twitch partners at an unspecified date within a few weeks, and expanded to Affiliates by 2021's end. Animated emotes will be limited to 60-frame GIFs of 1MB max for auto-resize mode and 512MB max for manual sizing mode, meaning the emotes will be severely limited in length. Those who could be sensitive to animated emotes will have the ability to turn animation off. Given Twitch's rocky history regarding built-in emotes, especially replacing the iconic PogChamp emote following controversial statements by the emote's original face, the recent greater focus on user-made emotes makes sense for the platform.
One interesting feature coming with animated emotes is the ability to turn existing static emotes into animated ones by applying simple effects to them. The addition of animated emotes will be accompanied by a new Library view, available within a few months, for streamers to manage emote tiers and a new emote tier entirely made for followers who have not yet subscribed. This is another positive change for those who may not be able to afford subscriptions following the announcement of an upcoming system to adjust Twitch subscription pricing according to regional living cost.
The positive changes happening for emotes come in the wake of negative pressure from the music industry yet again, with over 1,000 DMCA takedowns sent to Twitch recently. As many positive changes as Twitch can make, the issues around copyright are still a huge problem on the platform, and it will need to focus on copyright rules next to protect streamers who rely on the platform. Still, the positive changes Twitch has made recently are welcome to users of the platform, and the emote updates will benefit streamers and viewers alike.
The ability to disable emote animation may devalue animated emotes to people who are sensitive to such animation, but streamers may get around this by specifically designing their emotes so the first frame is useable on its own, with any animation being extraneous. The addition of more features to subscribers, however, may draw users even further away from using the somewhat confusing Twitch Bits system and to subscriptions instead, so Twitch may have to add more benefits to using Bits to keep both features relevant.
Source: Twitch Blog
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