Introduction:

Twitch is an American video live streaming service that focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of esports competitions. In addition, it offers music broadcasts, creative content, and more recently, "in real life" streams. It is operated by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. It was introduced in June 2011 as a spin-off of the general-interest streaming platform Justin.tv. Content on the site can be viewed either live or via video on demand. The popularity of Twitch eclipsed that of its general-interest counterpart. In October 2013, the website had 45 million unique viewers, and by February 2014, it was considered the fourth largest source of peak Internet traffic in the United States. At the same time, Justin.tv's parent company was re-branded as Twitch Interactive to represent the shift in focus – Justin.tv was shut down in August 2014. That month, the service was acquired by Amazon for US$970 million, which later led to the introduction of synergies with the company's subscription service Amazon Prime. Twitch acquired Curse in 2016, an operator of online video gaming communities and introduced means to purchase games through links on streams along with a program allowing streamers to receive commissions on the sales of games that they play. By 2015, Twitch had more than 100 million viewers per month. In 2017, Twitch remained the leading live streaming video service for video games in the US, and had an advantage over YouTube Gaming, which was shut down in 2018. As of February 2020, it had 3 million broadcasters monthly and 15 million daily active users, with 1.4 million average concurrent users. As of May 2018, Twitch had over 27,000 partner channels.

Content:

Twitch is designed to be a platform for content, including esports tournaments, personal streams of individual players, and gaming-related talk shows. A number of channels do live speedrunning. The Twitch homepage currently displays games based on viewership. As of June 2018, some of the most popular games streamed on Twitch are Fortnite, League of Legends, Dota 2, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Hearthstone, Overwatch and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with a combined total of over 356 million hours watched.

As a teaching tool:

Twitch is often used for video game tutorials; the nature of Twitch allows mass numbers of learners to interact with each human other and the instructor in real time. Twitch is also used for software development learning, with communities of users streaming programming projects and talking through their work.

Charity:

Broadcasters on Twitch often host streams promoting and raising money towards charity. By 2013, the website has hosted events which, in total, raised over US$8 million in donations for charitable causes, such as Extra Life 2013. As of 2017, Twitch has raised over US$75 million in donations for charitable causes. The biggest charity event of Twitch is Zevent, a French project created by Adrien Nougaret and Alexandre Douchary, with more than US$6.9 million raised for Amnesty International in October 2020.

Esports:

ESL tournaments have aired on Justin.tv and later Twitch.tv since 2009. The platform has also been a longtime broadcaster of the Evolution Championship Series. Twitch has been the official broadcaster of the League of Legends World Championship since 2012, as well as other League of Legends tournaments organized by Riot Games. Dota 2's premier tournament The International has been livestreamed on Twitch since 2013. The platform airs Rocket League tournaments organized by Psyonix since 2016. The ELeague also broadcasts events on Twitch since 2016. Twitch and Blizzard Entertainment signed a two-year deal in June 2017 to make Twitch be the exclusive streaming broadcaster of select Blizzard esports championship events, with viewers under Twitch Prime earning special rewards in various Blizzard games. Twitch also reached a deal in 2018 to be the streaming partner of the Overwatch League, with the site also offering an "All-Access Pass" with exclusive content, emotes, and in-game items for Overwatch. Blizzard switched to rival platform YouTube in 2020. Fortnite Battle Royale competitions have aired on Twitch since its launch in 2017, including the E3 2018 Fortnite Pro-Am and the 2019 Fortnite World Cup. The NBA 2K League has been livestreamed on Twitch since its inception in 2018. As the COVID-19 pandemic suspended motorsports competitions around the world, several series launched sim racing competitions with real-life professional drivers. Some series had official broadcasts on Twitch, such as Formula One and IMSA. Many drivers also had their personal live streams on Twitch, as was the case of several eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series and INDYCAR iRacing Challenge drivers.