In January this year, live-streaming giant Twitch announced it would be laying off 500 staff and downsizing operations in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) with Twitch CEO Dan Clancy stating that the business is not profitable. While many people understood that tough decisions needed to be made, what no one expected was an immediate drop off in communication, leaving ANZ streamers and content creators in the dark. After 8 months of radio silence from Twitch and a series of layoffs, a group of frustrated ANZ content creators have banded together to help support and coordinate with each other by creating a community that’s fast becoming an essential space for Australian and New Zealand creators.
Not being one to sit by idly, Australian streamers POG and ZombiesLvBacon, with advice from MoonlitCharlie, formed ANZ Creators after creating a Discord with the intention of gathering creators to meet up at the 2024 Dreamhack event. POG saw the need for a new space for ANZ Creators when Twitch ANZ went dark and decided to repurpose the Discord channel to create a space for collaboration and support for creators of all sizes. “Our mission is to build a community that promotes, supports, and elevates the incredible talent that exists in our region with a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ attitude,” POG says when asked about the core values of ANZ Creators, “We want creators doing great things to be discovered and recognised for their efforts. We want to build a community around content creation as it is generally a very isolating experience! We also want to make it easy for brands who want to work in the creator space to find talent in our region.”
The community is rapidly growing and after spending some time in there, it is clear that it is a valuable resource for creators with a lot of like-minded creators sharing opportunities to bring others into events, sponsorships, and collaborations. “The main resource is the community itself! Gathering like-minded, established creators who are committed to this pursuit means there is an avalanche of advice, experiences, ideas, collaborators and critics – all very helpful stuff for a creator. ANZ Creators as a brand will also be regularly highlighting creators as part of ongoing campaigns, generally around affinity groups and themes (eg. Pride, NAIDOC, IRL streaming, Cozy creators, FPS creators). We are also building a directory of creators that will be accessible to brands and agencies looking to work with Australian and New Zealand talent” POG says of the ANZ Creators space.
ANZ Creators is working on fostering the streaming community by encouraging conversation “We have established a Discord channel as the home base for community and all things discussion and sharing. We’re hoping a bunch of collaborations will stem from this community. There will be future community opportunities in things like creator tournaments and IRL meetups ” says POG, he continues to share how ANZ Creators is already seeing results of the group amongst its members “There is already collaboration and networking happening. We’ve seen members team up with each other to create panels for PAX, collab streams, and content at events. We hope to see more, and will be looking for ways to facilitate this.” While going through the ANZ Creators discussions, it’s clear there’s an overall element of working together with content creators sharing tips for content production, applications for events, and opportunity sharing. There’s also a stronger sense of community by being able to share your wins, with other members cheering you on, making ANZ Creators a very positive and encouraging environment.
ANZ Creators is growing rapidly and is welcoming like-minded streamers and content creators to join the group, as well as encouraging viewers who enjoy Aussie and Kiwi streamers to follow their socials (links below) for brand exposure.
Twitch finally broke their silence on the ANZ region recently when CEO Dan Clancy joined a conversation with Aussie creators 8bitElliott, CarlaStreams, TRASH, and JackHuddo in which he was held to task over the abrupt lack of communication, and to his credit, he acknowledged how poorly it was handled. Outside of that, wasn’t really able to offer up a solution to streamers’ frustrations, seemingly sidestepping some questions by trying to announce new community-building features on the app, and stating that the level of support ANZ Streamers received, won’t return in the form it was due to it being fiscally unviable. While this news may have been frustrating, it’s encouraging to see ANZ Creators band together to not only fill that void left by Twitch ANZ but to recognise, nurture, and promote Australian and New Zealand creators deserving of their time in the spotlight.
Want to know more? Follow ANZ Creators Here:
Twitter – ANZCreators (@ANZCreators) / X
TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com/@anzcreators
Instagram – ANZ Creators (@anzcreators) • Instagram photos and videos
Twitch – https://t.co/SnW7AhQziv
