It’s a good day for streamers wanting to solidify their brand, or just find a shiny new username to adopt. After years of questions, streaming mega-site Twitch is finally opening up the vaunts on their now-defunct predecessor Justin.tv and are releasing thirty million inactive usernames for current streamers to adopt, with current streaming partners granted first pick.
Twitch cemented its enviable position by being the place to stream League of Legends. How many of these pro players did you discover on the site?
Revealed in an otherwise-confidential email leaked to TechCrunch, yesterday the Amazon-owned streaming service sent out a message to all current partners detailing the newfound availabilty of the older Justin.tv usernames, and asking repeatedly for the information to not be shared elsewhere.
That part didn’t work out so well, I suppose, although with the cat out of the bag, Twitch has since confirmed the contents of the mailshot.
Not that having this information early helps more casual streamers, as partners are officially being given free reign to rebrand themselves using a now-defunct Justin-era username before anyone else. Even those streamers who had already changed their handle within the past two months will find that restriction lifted if they plan to adopt one of these orphan titles.
Twitch promise their partners that changing up their name will lead to no loss of revenue, although they will have to update their business cards and external links as appropriate. Their previous usernames will also remain locked down, so nobody can swoop in to poach a popular streamer’s name – they may not be in direct control of their older name, but nobody else can claim it, at least.
There is no word on whether the old Justin.tv usernames will be made available to the general streaming community. It stands to reason that it should become an option eventually, but there’s nothing set in stone or promised at the present time.