Hasan Piker announced he’s pulling the plug on dual streaming to YouTube alongside Twitch. In a recent clip, the political commentator called the simulcasting effort “somewhat of a failure” and said he’s returning to streaming exclusively on Twitch.
The main issue was viewership split. Instead of growing his total audience, Hasan found he was mostly dividing his existing viewers between two platforms. That made his concurrent viewer counts look smaller on both Twitch and YouTube, which matters more than you might think. On Twitch especially, lower numbers can hurt your placement in category directories and make you less discoverable to new viewers.
Managing two separate chats at once also proved difficult. Trying to engage with audiences on both platforms simultaneously meant neither community got his full attention. The fragmentation made moderation harder and the overall experience worse for everyone involved.
But the biggest headache appears to be YouTube’s Content ID system. Hasan’s streams often involve watching and commenting on news clips, YouTube videos, and broadcast segments. That’s standard political commentary content on Twitch, where copyright enforcement has historically been inconsistent.
YouTube is a different story. Content ID automatically scans streams for copyrighted material and can redirect ad revenue to rights holders or restrict monetization entirely. For a streamer whose format relies on showing clips to discuss them, that’s a major operational problem. Even when the usage might qualify as fair use, the automated system doesn’t care.
The revenue model matters too. Twitch’s subscription-based monetization has historically been more lucrative for established streamers than YouTube Live’s ad-focused approach. When you factor in Content ID claims eating into YouTube revenue, the math gets even worse.
The numbers game
Some viewers reported seeing Hasan hit high concurrent viewership numbers on YouTube early in the experiment, with figures reportedly reaching over 100,000 viewers. But those numbers allegedly dropped significantly in later streams, suggesting the initial spike didn’t translate into sustained growth.
Hasan’s explanation centered on the reality that he wasn’t actually growing his audience. He was just splitting his regular viewers across two platforms, adding a few thousand extra at most. The hassle of managing two communities and dealing with stricter copyright enforcement apparently wasn’t worth that marginal gain.
