New Developer Agreement and Terms of Service
TL;DR: We have a new Developer Agreement that includes guidelines around the use of Twitch APIs.
Several factors motivated us to update our former API ToS: age, the array of services available, a desire to be clear, experience, and feedback from the community. Our prior API terms stretch back to when Twitch released its first API. Since then, we’ve expanded our API offerings to cover social features, Clips, and more. With new developers joining our ecosystem, we want guidelines that provide clarity and certainty to developers, as well as satisfy the demands of our community.
What is the Developer Agreement?
The Agreement is the set of legal terms you agree to when you create a developer account or access the Twitch APIs, or other materials we make available.
These terms govern things like rate limits, keys, data storage, security, abuse policies, and more. We tried to be concise, constructing language that would inform your development process. In part, we did this because of the feedback we received that some of the older terms of service were ambiguous. We hope you find that these new terms tackle that feedback.
Now, a bit about structure. We designed the agreement so that the general terms governing Twitch’s arrangement with developers are upfront. The schedules that follow those terms include specific guidance and terms around the particular services or products covered under that Schedule. The first schedule is the Twitch APIs schedule.
What is the Twitch APIs Schedule?
The Twitch APIs Schedule is a straight-forward set of guidelines and rules for working with the Twitch APIs. You can find the schedule on the Developer Agreement page under the Schedule 1 heading. Again, we designed these terms to help guide not only how you integrate with Twitch’s service, but also guide your process of building applications that use Twitch to ensure a consistent and meaningful experience for users. As we add more functionality to the platform (and with feedback, too), we will keep these updated; so please revisit them.
What does this mean for my integration?
In the short term, nothing will change drastically. In the future, we’ll be reaching out to applications about setting up data sharing agreements as needed. There is some work to be done on that process, so we’ll talk more about that as we figure it all out.
Questions?
If you have questions or concerns that you’re in violation of the new terms, please reach out to us. Otherwise, you can discuss, leave feedback, or ask general questions on the forums. We’ll try to keep the legalese to a minimum. ;)