Twitch rose to prominence on the back of video games but that doesn't mean all of its users adhere to that single genre. Over the years, a growing number of streamers have used the platform to explore other areas of creative interest. Instead of watching people play games for hours on end, many have enjoyed tagging along as others tinker in Photoshop, paint and even blow glass.
Today, Twitch is officially acknowledging the movement with the launch of a brand new site.
Twitch Creative features a new landing page for the Creative category and a unique tagging system that quietly launched a few months ago.
The addition also meant that Twitch had to update its rules of conduct with a vague set of governing guidelines. In a blog post announcing the new category, Twitch's Bill Moorier said they expect to learn much about what is and what isn't appropriate as the Creative community grows. I suspect Moorier is referring to things like artistic nudity although nothing was mentioned specifically.
In an interview with The Verge, Moorier noted that the overall audience and broadcaster base of Twitch is growing at a rate of around 20 percent each month. The creative community, however, is expanding at nearly double that pace and has around a thousand active creators with roughly two million monthly viewers.
As an added bonus to celebrate the launch of Creative, Twitch will broadcast every episode (yes, all 403 of them) of the original Bob Ross show over the course of the next eight and a half days. If you're a fan of happy trees, you'll no doubt want to tune in at some point over the coming week.