Twitch subscriptions are now cheaper in the UK
And most of the rest of the world
Twitch have made the price of subscribing to streamers cheaper for UK users. The change is part of a sweep of pricing revisions made by Twitch which are designed to make local pricing "better align with their local cost of living." As a consequence, a subscription which previously cost £4.99 will now cost £3.99.
For context, a subscription in America costs $5 USD. The exchange rate means that UK subscribers were previously paying around $7 to subscribe to the same streamers.
The UK and Europe are just the most recent in a slate of changes to pricing which began with Mexico and Turkey in May, and continued since across Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Some countries such as Thailand saw subscription prices drop by as much as 57%.
Some streamers have expressed concern that the lower cost will eat into their profits and make it harder for smaller streamers to regularly hit the lower $100 limit on cashing out their earnings from Twitch. In a regularly updated post explaining the changes on the Twitch blog, the streaming service say they've seen more users subscribing as a result of the cheaper prices.
"Compared to the three months prior to local sub pricing, viewers are gifting five times more subs" in Mexico and Turkey, reads the post. "More creators are earning sub revenue now, and more viewers overall are supporting their favorite channels... These results confirm to us that lower prices help subscribers grow." Twitch are also guaranteeing Twitch creators a certain portion of their revenue for three months after the local pricing change, if they meet certain eligibility requirements.
Unfortunately the best Twitch channel still doesn't accept subscriptions, so all this is moot anyway.