- Some viewers have been exploiting Twitch’s subscription refund feature
- Twitch implements new processes to combat illegitimate “chargeback” refunds
- Trolls will hopefully have a harder time harassing streamers
Twitch is going to implement changes to the subscription refund process. This is to combat viewers who make illegitimate “chargeback” refunds after 24 hours to troll streamers.
What Is This Practice?
There has been a small part of the Twitch audience, who for some time now, has been exploiting a loophole in Twitch’s subscription refund process. This is known as “chargeback”. Sometimes when a new subscriber is gained, a streamer will make some kind of reaction, or leave a text-to-speech message. After the desired effect has been achieved, the viewer will request a refund within 24 hours and receive it without any consequence.
This is but one of the ways to harass streamers. It also damages the platform’s reputation. To combat this, Twitch has decided to make changes to its refund process and hopefully make it harder for people to exploit subscriptions to troll content creators.
What Are the New Policies?
One of the ways to combat this exploit is to see how often a user has requested refunds throughout their account’s history. Users can still request refunds within a 24-hour period. However, this will now go through the new process and if a user is considered to have exploited the refund process before, they can be given a temporary or permanent ban.
Twitch said in a statement: “Submitting excessive refund requests or attempting to abuse our refund processes is against Twitch’s policies and could result in limited access to products or services and/or suspension or termination of your account.”
It is hoped this is a step in the right direction. Twitch has recently been implementing various new policies to combat hate and trolling. However, a lot of people still seem to think this is not enough. Some say that addressing the unethical practice of the “chargeback” loophole is great, but still does not seem to help with bigger problems such as the hate raids that have plagued Twitch for some time now. Hopefully, we will soon see that problem also solved. More detailed information on the new changes can be found on Twitch’s help page here.
