Former head of creator development at Twitch Marcus ‘djWHEAT’ Graham said the company has a “huge empathy problem” towards creators and saw him as a “rebel” for prioritizing them.
Former shoutcaster djWHEAT was one of the longest-tenured workers at Twitch until his departure in Janaury 2022, as he worked for the streaming platform for an entire decade.
After Wheat exited the company, he voiced concerns with the direction of the site as the Amazon-owned streaming platform reportedly has lost tons of staff over the last year and filled them with workers from outside the streaming community.
Now, he’s spoken directly about how he felt he was perceived during his time at the company.
djWHEAT originally joined Twitch all the way back in 2011.djWHEAT worried Twitch isn’t prioritizing streaming community
The streamer was live on March 4 when he went over the original reporting from Bloomberg, which shed light on the exodus of employees the company had seen in 2021.
A Twitch spokesperson shared a statement that read, “The common thread for all employees is a drive to serve our community.”
Wheat pushed back on this claim, “I was seen as a rebel for my drive to serve the community. I don’t understand how this can even be said when I myself felt attacked being that person at Twitch.”
He continued, “I spent my last four months at Twitch fighting for empathy training for employees. Do you think I’d do that if there was a large connection with creators within the company? Do you think I’d waste my time doing that if there wasn’t an empathy problem within Twitch? It is a f**king huge problem! Clip this s**t.”
DJWHEAT detailed Twitch’s problems even further. “People don’t understand creators. They don’t understand what they need. They don’t understand the struggles that they deal with,” he said.
The former Twitch executive finished by saying the platform has a problem not just understanding the needs of their big streamers like xQc and Pokimane, but also smaller creators who are just starting to build their channels.
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