Twitch Drops Overview

IMPORTANT: This page is intended for developers. If you are looking for support on Drops as a viewer or streamer, please reach out to the game developer running the Drops campaign, and review our help article on How to Earn Drops.

Introduction

Twitch Drops enable you as a game developer to grant in-game rewards to the Twitch community when streamers play your game. Twitch Drops bring the Twitch community closer to your game, ultimately helping you acquire new players or re-engage your existing player base.

Twitch tracks select viewer actions and watch activity for users watching participating channels streaming your game’s category. Once one of your Drops campaign’s rules have been satisfied by the viewer, they will then be able to claim the Drop’s reward(s) and notify your systems that they are ready to receive an in-game item of your predetermined choice.

What’s the benefit?

As a game developer, Drops amplify awareness and engagement of major gaming moments, strengthen the bond between your game and its community, and drive conversion from viewers into players. From a streamer perspective, participating in Drops campaigns can generate an increase in followers, viewers, and in the case of subscription-based Drops channel subscribers.

In 2024, 41 million Drops were claimed across over 6,000 campaigns. These campaigns often see an increase in total hours watched within their respective game categories. In the case of subscription-based Drops campaigns, some creators may see an increase in their gross revenue due to increase of channel subscriptions, driving desire to participate in the campaign.

Game developers also often find a conversion of viewers into players, non-spending players into spending players, and often an increase in in-game microtransaction purchases by those players during the period of the campaign.

What can you provide via Drops?

Drops are intended to provide users with non-transferable virtual items that add value to the user’s experience within the game, or provide access that is otherwise not gated by monetary means. Common examples of this include in-game items that provide cosmetic value such as unique skins, beta access to an unreleased free-to-play game, and in-game currency used for cosmetics.

Rewards are granted off of Twitch, such as within your game or on your website, and can come in any form as long as they are of no monetary value. Examples of common forms include in-game items and redeemable codes. If you grant redeemable codes as a Reward, all users who complete the Drop Rule must be awarded a code, as per our Developer Services Agreement.

We recommend avoiding the following:

• Transferable items. These encourage farming behavior in which viewers create multiple accounts and watch different channels from multiple browser windows.
• Items that provide an advantage over another player, such as in-game crafting material earned through gameplay. These can create discourse within your community surrounding the imbalanced advantage.
• Any items with a monetary value associated with them. This is fully disallowed as per our Developer Services Agreement. Examples of this include in-game items that can be bought with or traded for real currency or cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency itself, and NFTs.

Running a Successful Drops Campaign

A Drops campaign is most effective in conjunction with additional marketing that drives interest to your campaign on Twitch. Throughout your game’s lifecycle, you can use Drops campaigns to attract new player interest in your title, or reward your most loyal fans. Here are a few tips and best practices to ensure your campaign resonates with the Twitch community and excites your player base.

Choose the Best Requirements for Your Community

When setting a Time-based Drop, it is recommended to set the watch time long enough for viewers to get a sense of the game, but not too much time that would demotivate them from earning your reward. Generally, 15-30 minutes is a good time requirement for a standard Drop Reward. Drop Rewards that are of higher perceived value, such as unique limited-time item skins, generally are put at a higher watch time. On average, most developers choose around 3-6 hours for these types of rewards. Additional Drops of lower perceived value can be awarded after the large one, to encourage additional watch time.

If Creator Allowlists are utilized, remember to adjust your Drop time requirements based around when you expect those channels to be live. Since users can only accrue watch time for a Drop while the streamer participating in the campaign is live, so if all allowlisted creators are offline then nobody will be able to earn your Drop.

When setting a Subscription-based Drop, it is recommended to set the requirement reasonable between the perceived value of the rewards, and the spending ability of your audience. Drop Rewards of this type generally average between 1-2 subscriptions, but in some cases may be set higher if the reward is of extremely high perceived value.

It is recommended that you find a mix of both Time-based and Subscription-based Drops within a single campaign. Often, rewards of the highest perceived value are set as a Subscription-based Drop, with 1-2 subscriptions being required. In these cases, almost all other Drops in the campaign will be set as a Time-based Drop.

Utilize Creator Allowlists in an Engaging Way

Twitch offers a feature called “Creator Campaign Access”, also commonly referred to by developers as a “streamer allowlist”, which enables you to specify creators who will be able to feature your Drops campaign on their channel and allow their communities to earn your Drop Rewards.

We recommend in most cases to allow as many creators as possible to participate in your campaign, which is the default behavior when no creators are added to this list. However, setting up this limited access can be useful for campaigns that are part of a marketing effort alongside a limited set of creators. This can include co-marketing campaigns with specific creators, or a broader but limited set of creators who are part of your company’s Creator Program.

Guide Users in Redeeming Drops Within Your Game

Provide users with an instructional guide on a webpage, support article, or blog post that describes what your game’s Drops are, how they’re earned, and how to redeem them within the game. The best guides for this include a step-by-step image guide of how to link their Twitch account within their game or on the game’s website, and how to claim the Drop on Twitch once it’s earned.

For additional guidance to users in regards to earning and claiming on Twitch’s website, we recommend linking to our How to Earn Drops help article.

Enhance Gaming Moments

Running a Drops campaign during major moments for your game often boosts the visibility of those moments on Twitch. Some major moments you can utilize include world premieres, beginning of open and closed betas, new seasons of your game, and esports tournaments.

Be Thoughtful with your Campaign and Reward Names

Clear naming of your campaign and Drop Rewards make for a better experience for creators and viewers. Consider using nomenclature your community is familiar with so there is a clear understanding of what the campaign is, and what rewards can be earned. As an example, a campaign name of “The Cool Game Winter Challenge Event” where you can earn “500 Super Gems” clearly illustrates what campaign is running and what rewards viewers can earn.

Limit the Number of Campaigns you Create

We recommend having at most 2 campaigns on a channel at a time, with one global campaign and one channel-specific campaign.

We have seen that having many concurrent global Drops campaigns running at the same time does not create a good user experience on Twitch, and in fact, causes user confusion and dilutes your message. We have also seen increased Customer Service activity for game developers when there are multiple campaigns running, with users reaching out to ask about individual rewards that they did not receive.

Make Drops Rewarding

To make the biggest impact for your Drops campaign, providing rewards that excite your community is critical to achieving success. Creating exclusive rewards that can only be achieved through Drops will drive your audience to participate, and attract new potential fans. Some recommendations for exclusive rewards include unique Drops-exclusive cosmetics (such as skins and emblems), and beta access to your game.

Many repeating Drops campaigns feature common items, including in-game currency and XP boosters. While these are useful as filler rewards, the largest user impact can be expected from exclusive and unique rewards.

FAQ

What are my obligations as a developer?

For more information regarding your obligations when running Drops campaigns, refer to schedule 3 of the Developer Services Agreement.

How long do I need to support a user claiming a Drop and linking their account after claiming for fulfillment?

Developers are required to fulfill viewer rewards that claim and link their accounts at least 14 days after the campaign ends. You can choose to fulfill rewards claimed after that point, but it is not explicitly required. For rare time-sensitive campaigns, such as a limited time beta, the 14-day requirement may be waived.

Will Twitch Drops increase the rank of my game in the Twitch directory?

In conjunction with a strategic marketing campaign, Twitch Drops are effective in enticing creators to play your title and motivate viewers to check out your game on Twitch. We recommend working with our creators in advance of the campaign to make sure they can show off the best of your game during the Drops Campaign. We also recommend using other social channels to inform viewers about the Drop in advance.

Where can I get support for Drops?

During campaigns you may see inbound support requests from users who are having trouble getting their Drop Reward. Since rewards are handled by the developer, not by Twitch, after the claim button on Twitch is pressed, we recommend directing users to your support articles or blog posts explaining how to claim items within your game.

In the case where a user is having issues with the claiming process on Twitch, we recommend referring them to our How to Earn Drops help article before Twitch Support.

If you as a developer need support from Twitch, we recommend our Developer Support page for all resources available to you, including access to our developer forums and TwitchDev Discord server.

Can streamers opt-out of a Drops campaign?

Yes. Streamers have the ability to globally enable or disable Drops on their channel using the toggle in the Viewer Rewards section of the Creator Dashboard. Streamers can also disable specific Drops campaigns from this section of the dashboard as well by expanding each open campaign.