2 of the biggest streamers on Twitch rely on unpaid helpers – “Without mods they would be banned”

Félix “xQc” Lengyel and Kai Cenat are the biggest streamers on English-speaking Twitch. Tens of thousands of spectators watch them regularly. In order to do justice to these masses, they need moderators who ensure law and order in the chat or do other work. However, the streamers do not want to pay for their mods.

Who are the streamers?

• The Franco-Canadian xQc was considered to be the largest streamer in the English-speaking world. More than 11.3 million people follow the former Overwatch professional on Twitch, last year an average of almost 75,000 watched him play shooters, gamble or react to content on social networks (via sullygnome).
• Kai Cenat is the shooting star of Twitch right now. He has only been streaming since January 2021 and has already overtaken xQc for most paid subscriptions on the platform. If he had “only” 11,000 viewers on average last year, his streams already reached 65,000 average viewers in October 2022 (via sullygnome).

Who were the streamers that paved the way for people like xQc and Kai Cenat? You can find out in our video.

Why pay when there are volunteers?

Why doesn’t Kai Cenat pay for his mods? The 20-year-old sparked controversy on the subject back on Oct. 23 when he admitted on a stream that he doesn’t pay for his mods (via reddit.com). Now he came back to talk about it in a stream with xQc.

Kai Cenat explained that his mods asked him to ask xQc to pay for his mods. When xQc denied this, Kai Cenat called his own mods “stupid idiots” and explained: “You do that shit voluntarily for free.”

Apparently, Kai Cenat sees no need to pay for his mods as long as there are enough volunteers willing to do the job.

xQc is passionate about mods

What did xQc reply? xQc cited “creative reasons” for not paying for his mods. However, he admits that it would not be a financial setback for him to pay the mods. The main fear he probably fears is that getting paid will change the dynamic and make things weird.

I don’t want it to be weird. What if they don’t like my channel anymore? They don’t like moderating, they don’t like me, but they do it for the money? Then it gets kind of weird because I’m trying to do something creative, but then they hate it and it goes against the grain of it all.

xQc

Apparently xQc is all about having passionate viewers as mods who really stand behind their channel and content. In addition, it is not so much work for the individual if you have many mods, according to the streamer.

Viewers are divided

What are the viewers saying? Like Kai Cenat’s original statement, the joint clip with xQc also spread reddit and is discussed there. However, the sympathy for the unpaid mods is limited.

While some of the commenters do agree that mods should be paid for their work, they don’t seem to understand why they’re willing to go to the effort. Only when mods refuse to provide their services without payment can they expect to be paid.

However, some point out that the streamers are quite dependent on their mods. This would also ensure that the streamers do not get in trouble from Twitch for things they watch or messages that appear in the chat.

Without mods, streamers have long been banned, according to one comment.

The question of when exactly a service deserves to be paid is also interesting. Some reddit users explain that many of the mods don’t actually do much, while others sometimes have great responsibilities. They should therefore only be paid if they would take on additional tasks.

The perception of the mod activities seems to differ from other work in the streamer environment. For example, xQc is supposed to give its video editor a share in advertising revenue. It is not known why he should not do the job out of passion.

The example of some larger streamers who actually pay for their mods, including the YouTuber Ludwig Ahgren, shows that there is another way. During his record-breaking 2021 subathon, Ludwig reportedly even paid his mods up to $5,000 a day (via This Online World).

What do streamers need mods for? Mods stands for moderators. They manage a streamer’s chat and remove unwanted content and spam. While smaller channels may still be able to do without mods, Twitch recommends one mod for every 600 viewers for larger streamers (via twitch).

According to an analysis from July 2022, an average of up to 700 messages per minute should appear in the xQc chat (via stream charts). At this speed, it’s extremely difficult for a streamer to keep track of their chat themselves.

Mods can also relieve streamers of additional work. For example, they change the category and stream title when the streamer changes games, conduct polls, or help organize events or sweepstakes.

What’s in it? You’ll be rewarded with a fancy green sword icon displayed in chat and the honor of working for your favorite streamer.

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