Twitch adds uploads.
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Amazon’s Twitch to add video uploads in new battle with YouTube

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitch just strayed into direct competition with YouTube.

Emmett Shear, chief executive of Amazon’s Twitch division, announced at the TwitchCon 2015 convention today that the company will add video uploads and playlists in 2016.

Twitch has more than 100 million monthly active users for its gameplay livestreaming service as well as 1.7 million live broadcasters. But now the company will make it possible for players to upload video to Twitch, starting next year. With uploads, that means that users can create videos, but won’t have to livestream them first.

That means you can create produced videos rather than create only live videos. And that’s certainly the heart of Google’s YouTube video platform.

Playlists also help organize your past streams on your channel so that they can be viewed in a nonlive way more easily. Right now, many Twitch streamers add their streams to playlists in YouTube.

Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.