Twitch has begun strictly enforcing its rules against streamers who display combined chats or donation alerts from multiple platforms on their broadcasts. The company is targeting creators who integrate chats from YouTube, Kick, or other platforms alongside Twitch chat during multistreamed content.
Several streamers have reported receiving warnings or seeing their ad revenue restricted after violating these guidelines. In one notable case, a streamer known as Nutty faced penalties after allegedly ignoring Twitch’s rules regarding merged chats, even though they knew about the policy.
While Twitch relaxed its exclusivity requirements in late 2023 to allow simultaneous broadcasting across multiple platforms, the company still draws a hard line on how these multistreams work. According to Twitch’s official Simulcasting Guidelines, streamers can’t visually display chats or interactive elements from competing platforms during a Twitch broadcast.
“Twitch doesn’t like multiple chats being shown on screen because they can’t moderate or control what’s going on in other chats that now show up in live feeds,” explained one creator who got caught up in the new crackdown.
The enforcement mostly goes after what’s shown on screen, not what is said out loud. Streamers are still allowed to mention donations or chat messages from other platforms verbally, but putting them on screen during a Twitch stream breaks the rules.
Twitch says the logic comes down to moderation—basically, the platform says it can’t be held responsible for things coming in from outside sources that its tools can’t filter. However, many creators view this as Twitch’s way of keeping people loyal to their platform and preventing their viewers from splitting up.
Technical tools that combine chats from multiple places, like Restream or Streamlabs’ multichat features, are now a headache to use during Twitch streams. Some creators circumvent the rules by setting up overlays that only display content from the platform the viewer is watching on.
The way Twitch is enforcing these rules seems all over the place—some streamers get warned right away, while others find out they’ve lost ad revenue with no heads-up. Smaller creators who lean on Twitch’s ad program to make a living feel especially at risk from these penalties.
