Like it never happened Twitchs new storage limits will purge huge swaths of Internet gaming history Amazon-owned platform says "costly" historical archives don't drive "engagement." Kyle Orland Feb 20, 2025 1:00 pm | 33 When these archived highlights are deleted, it'll be like some streamers weren't there at all... Credit: MikkelWilliam | Getty Images When these archived highlights are deleted, it'll be like some streamers weren't there at all... Credit: MikkelWilliam | Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn morePopular Amazon-owned game streaming platform Twitch announced Wednesday that it will be imposing a 100-hour limit on the archived video highlights users can preserve permanently on the site. And while Twitch says that only 0.5 percent of users will be affected by these new limits, gamers are warning that the move threatens to eradicate large swaths of recent gaming history from the Internet.Highlights, in Twitch's own words, are a way for Twitch streamers to "show off your best moments to new viewers who land on your channel page." Unlike VOD recordings of full Twitch broadcastswhich are deleted automatically after seven days (or 60 days for Twitch partners)these highlights provide a more permanent way to maintain an archive of important moments for many Twitch streamers.That seeming permanence is set to end on April 29, though, when Twitch says it will start to delete content from channels with more than 100 hours of highlights, starting with the least-viewed highlights. Twitch headquarters in San Francisco. Credit: Getty Images Twitch headquarters in San Francisco. Credit: Getty Images In announcing the change, Twitch cited the "costly" indefinite storage of these highlights, which it says are responsible for "less than 0.1% of hours watched" across the site. These highlights "haven't been very effective in driving discovery or engagement with viewers," Twitch wrote, and limiting them will "help us manage resources more efficiently... and continue to invest in new features and improvements to more effective viewer engagement tools like Clips and the mobile feed."An incalculable lossOn social media, though, many Twitch users are expressing outrage over what the loss of these clips will do to the shared history of their gaming communities. "Who the hell cares about discovery or engagement?" one streamer wrote. "People use highlights to archive, and you're destroying YEARS of speedrunning and other communities' history."The speedrunning community seems particularly likely to be negatively affected by Twitch's move. As VTuber VanityFox points out, "many speedrunners use highlights to document world records and important moments... the amount gaming history they are deleting to save money and shove short form content on your feed is incalculable."But the potential preservation impacts are not limited to speedrunners. "I get sad thinking of all of the StarCraft 2 history that will soon be lost because it only lived on Twitch and not YouTube," FearDragon64 wrote. "Twitch wants to delete every GDQ, Twitch plays Pokemon, every tournament or significant event series, most speedruns, most longplayers, most RPG recorded runs, and all of the history of what happened on Twitch, from Twitch," MechaLink added.It's "history evaporating before our eyes," as one social media user memorably wrote.Abandon shipif you canMany streamers already post versions of their archived streams and highlights to outside platforms like YouTube or the Internet Archive. That means GamesDoneQuick's hundreds of hours of archived Twitch highlights will still be accessible elsewhere, for instance.For those that have yet to do that kind of external backup, Twitch is offering two months for users to download their own highlights for posterity and potential reupload elsewhere. But Twitch says it won't be offering a bulk download tool for that purpose, sticking many users with hundreds or even thousands of hours of highlights with the daunting task of downloading and/or reuploading their clips one by one (or using dodgy third-party bulk download tools to do so)."It'd take a full time job to upload all of this elsewhere," streamer Ravsy wrote of his over 4,600 hours of archived highlights."I will lose more than [5,000 hours] of my broadcast history because of your decision," longtime streamer HannyS added. "I have no way to be able to preserve and archive that... amazing..."The limit is leading to something of a Sophie's Choice situation for some longtime streamers. "Come April I will have been streaming for 10 years on Twitch. Making me choose what to delete from so many memories is heartbreaking," streamer The OnlyRyann posted.What we could loseWhile attentive streamers will at least have an opportunity to back up their Twitch highlights, some have noted that inactive, retired, or even deceased streamers from the past may not have the chance to preserve their archived streams in time for the April 29 deadline. That could even include Twitch cofounder Justin Kan, who has stored hundreds of short video highlights dating back to the launch of the site 18 years ago, when it was still known as Justin.tv. Clips from Twitch cofounder Justin Kan will likely be swept up in the company's highlight purge. Credit: Twitch Clips from Twitch cofounder Justin Kan will likely be swept up in the company's highlight purge. Credit: Twitch Moving archived clips over to other platforms is also an incomplete solution for many streamers because the reuploaded video clips won't preserve the live chat history that Twitch stores alongside their highlights.Even ignoring the chat history issue, many streamers simply feel their Twitch archives should remain on Twitch. "YouTube is an entirely different world," streamer Kolo wrote. "I stopped uploading VODs to YouTube because it destroyed my mental health. Genuinely. I want to preserve the history & culture of my Twitch community history; it belongs on Twitch."Twitch notes that its money-saving move will only affect the "less than 0.5% of active streamers on Twitch [who] are over the 100-hour storage limit today." But some have questioned whether that statistic includes the millions of streamers who only tried streaming on Twitch once or twice. Almost by definition, this kind of mass deletion will have the largest impact on streamers with long histories and large followings.Many irate Twitch users have been gathering on the company's User Voice forums to protest the decision. "Proceeding with this 100-hour limit will actively push streamers away from the Twitch platform, opting instead for services that do not place arbitrary limits on the archiving of digital content," user solar_espeon wrote in one popular post there. "The best course of action is to simply not implement this 100-hour limit."The new highlight storage limits come just over a year after Twitch laid off 500 employees amid continuing struggles to achieve profitability.Kyle OrlandSenior Gaming EditorKyle OrlandSenior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper. 33 Comments