Twitch isn’t just for streaming and watching games anymore.
Amazon’s livestreaming company plans to launch its digital gaming store for PC games and downloadable content “soon.” Twitch is the most popular game-streaming site, attracting 100 million users a month. Now it enters a digital game store industry that Valve’s Steam dominates.
Twitch’s store will launch with 50 games, including For Honor, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, and Paladins. Buying any game on Twitch worth more than $5 gives the Twitch user a Twitch Crate, which gives them chat emotes, chat badges, and Bits for Cheering (which you can give to streamers, earning them real money).
Earning a Twitch Crate also enters you into a contest. Every week from now until the end of April, Twitch will pick a random winner of PC gaming gear like the Hyper X Cloud Gaming Headset or the Logitech Pro Mechanical Gaming Keyboard. Twitch will also pick a grand prize winner who will get $500 worth of professional streaming equipment.
Twitch streamers can also earn money from the digital store by directing their viewers to games on their channel. They will get 5 percent of any of those purchases.