Over the course of September, a number of streamers on the Kick Partner Program were affected by a manual error in our earnings calculations. Some of you were paid less than you'd earned, rates moved around without a clear reason, and for too long there wasn't much coming from our side about why. Plenty of you told me that directly, over X, over email, and through pretty much every other way you could find to reach me. Fair enough. This should never have happened and I'm personally sorry for how this occurred.
I know streaming isn't just content. For a lot of you it's a career, and these numbers are rent, bills and whether the next month works. Something like this tests the trust you put in us and something that no company should ever take for granted – especially one that was created to give Creators a fair chance. The way I see it, that trust comes down to three things: we pay you accurately every stream, we own it when we get something wrong, and we're open about what we're doing and why. So I'll take each of those in turn.
Paying you right, every time
That's the baseline of the Partner Program and in September we didn't meet it. As soon as the error was identified we corrected the affected calculations and issued manual payments to every creator impacted. If that's you, it will have already landed in your account, and you would have received an email about this. One thing to note is that this will be in your Stripe dashboard, but is not reflected in your on-platform earnings.
Owning it
The error is on KICK, and so is the fact that the old way of setting your rate left too much room for this to happen and too little for you to see it coming. Your rate was worked out stream by stream, so things that had nothing to do with how hard you were working or how your community was growing could push it up or down. Even when the numbers were right, you had no real way of knowing what a stream was worth until after you'd finished it. If you're trying to make a living off this, that's not an ideal position to be in, and we’ve listened to the volatility and made changes.
For starts, we've changed the methodology. Your rate is no longer set one stream at a time. It now looks at a stretch of your recent streams, including the one you're live on right now, to land on your rate and what you get paid. Your earnings build over time instead of resetting every session, and one quiet night doesn't wreck your payout. When you hit go live, you should have a fair idea of what you're going to make before you've started. Show up consistently, get paid consistently.
To put the scale in perspective, KPP pays out millions a week across thousands and thousands of creators. When you're moving that much money, a small problem in how it's calculated turns into a big problem for a lot of real people very quickly. That's why we've gone with something predictable over something that can surprise you in either direction.
None of this changes the 95/5 offer we've built with creators. Subscriptions and KICKs are not what we are changing and this still operates the same as it always has.
Being open about it
This week our Trust Centre will go live. It lays out how decisions around KPP, featuring and moderation are actually made, so you're not relying on rumours in chat or someone's screenshot to work out how the program treats you. It's a start and will evolve over time and as new learnings arise; but you can rely on that information.
While I'm being open, I'll also say that KPP has been a target. We're still finding creators and third parties trying to exploit it through excessive tabbing, view bots and a few other methods I am unable to spell out due to the commercial sensitivity of the program. Every dollar that ends up with someone gaming the system is a dollar that didn't go to a creator doing it properly. We're always going to get better at picking it up and the new methodology makes it a lot harder to pull off, but there isn’t a world where this isn’t attacked unfortunately – it will continue to be attacked and something we will always be fighting.
What you can do
If you reckon your community is being targeted, report this. Reports are the most useful thing you can do for us. Every one gets looked at, and what we learn from them goes straight into how we spot and remove these people across the platform. Less money going to bots and bad actors means more going to the creators and communities building this the right way.
Where to from here
We're still taking feedback on KPP and we'll keep making changes where they're needed. If something about your payments looks off, get in touch through Support.
We definitely won’t nail every decision first time, but we'll keep listening and we'll tell you when we change something rather than leaving you to work it out yourselves.
As always, thank you for sticking with us on KICK, and for giving us a hard time when we've needed it.
**Ethan
Director of KICK**
