- Twitch seems to show little love for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive streams
- The streams popularity doesn’t seem to give them a higher ranking in Twitch’s algorithms
- Twitch offers an explanation but the CS:GO community don’t like to be made fools of
Has Twitch been purposefully “nerfing” Counter-Strike: Global Offensive? An exchange between Mauisnake and Tom Verrilli tried to establish the facts.
Where Is CS:GO on Twitch, Ask Community
Twitch has been accused of not giving an equal footing to all, and that is perhaps why many now former platform stars have decided to move in recent months.
The latest accusation is levied against the Amazon-owned giant by Alex “Mauisnake” Ellenberg who posted a tweet, accusing Twitch of intentionally and purposefully undermining the chances of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to continue succeeding as a game:
Mauisnake was shocked to find out that even though CS:GO was one of the most-watched games (through an ESL stream) on December 11, it wasn’t anywhere to be seen in the website’s recommended sections. In fact, it seemed that Twitch had done a “great job of hiding” CS:GO from their feeds. Mauisnake is not the only one to have called out Twitch with streamers criticizing the platform for failing to recognize their contributions one way or another.
The tweet was picked up by fellow players who shared it on the /csgo sub, a discussion board, part of Reddit, which prompted people to raise the same question, and, just like that, people were quickly onto the story.
A Redditor expressed their confusion at the fact that ESL and Twitch had an exclusivity agreement, which seems not to matter much in the present case. Twitch though did not leave this post, nor the accusations, go unanswered and put chief product officer Tom Verrilli at the job of calming matters.
Twitch Smirks at the Accusations, CSGO Community Laughs Back
“This is my first-time hearing Twitch nerfs CSGO, but I can assure you it ain’t true,” Verrilli wrote colloquially, trying to diffuse the situation. The Twitch algorithm works differently, Verrilli said. They basically consider what non-registered users are watching and make recommendations based on this, he clarified. He went on to drive a few more points home:
Players weren’t really happy with the algorithm explanation, still not quite able to understand how it would work if CSGO was actively watched by Twitch (non)-users, but the stream was still not visible even in the FPS section.
“Such a dumb reply,” wrote one user who was not really convinced that Twitch was playing honestly there. Mauisnake was not really impressed either and argued a simple “LMAO,” partially “dumbing down” his own speak to match Verilli's.
Just like Twitch lost many respected streamers, it may end up losing communities if it doesn’t care how it treats them. Twitch streamers have often thrown a few jabs at the platforms, arguing that it should do more to split everything fairly.
