Regarding Chat QoS Issues

We are dedicated everyday to making sure that you have the very best experience on Twitch that we can possibly deliver.

The Twitch community has grown beyond even our wildest dreams (and those are some pretty wild dreams). Since we launched in June of 2011, the community has grown hundreds of percent, and we’re now flirting with 25 Million unique viewers per month. Thank you sincerely to each and every one of you 25 million people.

Now, with that growth comes some growing pains. Chat, for example, is one of the Twitch community’s favorite features. It’s also one of the features that is taxed heavily when very large numbers of people chat at the same time.

Many of you have let us know over the past week about issues you’ve perceived where our chat system is concerned. We want you to know that we are well aware of these issues, and that we are working overtime to fix them.

The good news? We’ve learned a lot from the massive audiences that have gathered on our top broadcasts of late, and an update to our hardware and software is coming that will result in a vastly superior experience for Twitch chatters.

Changes we’re making to ensure a better chat experience:

• We’re releasing a patch to our chat servers in the very near future that will make large, active chat rooms less taxing on our infrastructure.

• We’re making changes to our internal API faster, thereby delivering a more immediate and fluid chat.

• We’re adding more servers to keep up with demand and scaling them to meet future demand.

All of this will take time, but rest assured that we are working diligently on the issue. Thanks to everyone who gave us feedback, and thank you for your patience. We appreciate it.

Sincerely, The Twitch Team