On August 21, Twitch, the livestreaming video platform for gamers, announced that it will no longer an ad-free experience for Twitch Prime members.
The company, who re-evaluated the Twitch Prime benefits, will start displaying ads on September 14.
According to the Twitch company blog, the decision to monetize its Prime membership was driven in part to support creators on the platform:
Advertising is an important source of support for creators who make Twitch possible. This change will strengthen and expand that advertising opportunity for creators so they can get more support from their viewers for doing what they love.
If Twitch Prime users want to continue receiving an ad-free experience, they will need to upgrade to the $8.99 per month Twitch Turbo account. From now until October 15, current Twitch Prime users will continue getting ad-free viewing they are subscribed to, but will have to upgrade to an annual channel-specific subscription plan if they want to continue the ad-free viewing option on those channels.
Twitch says Prime members can also avoid ads on certain channels using the monthly channel subscription token: “Twitch Prime subscribers can still get channel-specific ad-free viewing as part of Prime by using your monthly subscription token on a channel that has ad-free viewing for subscribers turned on.”
Aside from this, none of the other Twitch Prime benefits will change, such as monthly channel subscriptions, monthly games, perks or chat badges.