YouTube star Niall ‘Pyrocynical’ Comas has lashed out at Twitch for the abrupt removal of his Partnership status, despite months of alleged silence from his local Partnerships team.
Earning the label of Partner on Twitch is about more than just status. With Partnership comes more features for your channel, clearer paths of communication with Twitch staff, and often, a better split of subscription revenue.
Thus, even popular social media celebs like Pyrocynical have ample reason to reach that level on the Amazon-owned platform. Having dedicated himself for over a year, applying for Partner four times along the way, he finally got that tick next to his name in 2022, though not through conventional means.
Weeks later and not only has the Partnership now been revoked, but so too has Pyrocynical’s Affiliate status, barring him from many standard features including a Subscription button on his channel.
“Twitch has essentially soft-banned me off the platform,” he claimed during a May 30 explanation on YouTube.
“I have applied for Partner a lot,” Pyrocynical explained in light of recent developments. Providing evidence of all communication with the EMEA Partnership team, the content creator revealed four instances where he applied throughout 2021. First in April, two times in September, and once more in November.
All four times he seemingly met the requirements in terms of both viewership and hours streamed. “I jumped through all the hoops and it wasn’t good enough for [Twitch],” he stressed.
The final application is where the situation grew more complicated. Rather than denying his Partnership, his local Twitch representatives simply “never replied,” Pyrocynical claimed.
“It has been three months and not a single reply from Twitch.”
During this stretch, there’s no way to “retract the application,” he continued. “You’re essentially stuck in purgatory hoping someone at Twitch finds your application.”
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As a result, Pyrocynical took matters into his own hands and hired a new management company to contact Twitch’s North American Partnerships team instead. With their very first attempt, this agency secured Partnership status for his Twitch account. However, it didn’t last long as the EMEA team soon caught wind.
“I got Partnered… for about two months, then they took it away again,” he said. “I’ve been de-Partnered, I’m not even an Affiliate anymore, I have no Sub button.”
An email that arrived from the EMEA Twitch Partnerships team explained why this agreement was “immediately [terminated].”
“You did not employ appropriate conduct when, after your Partner Application was denied by Twitch’s EMEA Partnerships team, you solicited Twitch’s North America Partnership team to become a Twitch Partner,” the email read.
The key detail being that Pyrocynical supposedly failed to disclose the “denial of [his] application by the EMEA Partnership team.”
This miscommunication in light of months of inactivity from his local team, has now resulted in all Partner and Affiliate perks being stripped from his Twitch account.
As for what comes next, Pyrocynical isn’t all too certain. Though with his future on Twitch not seeming bright, he teased a potential move to rival platform YouTube Gaming.
We’ll have to see if Twitch looks to resolve this issue once and for all, or if Pyrocynical’s channel remains without Partnership status indefinitely.
