Twitch has announced plans to implement a 100-hour storage limit for all highlights and uploads for all users. The announcement has been met with immediate criticism from speedrunners in particular, who fear that they’re on the verge of losing years worth of history.
“Starting April 19, 2025,” Twitch explains in its announcement, “all Highlights and Uploads, whether published or unpublished, will count towards a single 100-hour storage limit. The storage limit applies to all Highlights and Uploads on your channel, regardless of when they were created.” This auto-deletion does not apply to VODs or clips, but clips are short and VODs already auto-delete after somewhere between seven and 60 days, depending on the status of your Twitch account.
“The storage of this content is costly,” Twitch explains, noting that highlights “haven’t been very effective in driving discovery or engagement” compared with other features on the platform. “Introducing this 100-hour storage limit, which impacts less than 0.5% of active channels on Twitch and accounts for less than 0.1% of hours watched, helps us manage resources more efficiently, maintain support of Highlights and Uploads, and continue to invest in new features and improvements to more effective viewer engagement tools like Clips and the mobile feed.”
We’re implementing a 100 hr storage limit for Highlights & Uploads starting 4/19. This won’t apply to Past Broadcasts (VODs) or clips.Less than 0.5% of streamers exceed 100hrs & this content accounts for <0.1% of hours watched. Users will be notified.https://t.co/RoDIAEzBV5 pic.twitter.com/zN7iKHpSqmFebruary 19, 2025
Of course, Twitch is owned by Amazon, which is a major player in cloud storage, so individual users aren’t really buying the idea that the platform is hurting for storage space. The proposed auto-deletion presents a particular problem for the speedrunning scene, whose history is largely documented through Twitch highlights.
“PSA to all speedrunners – PLEASE download and upload all highlights to YouTube,” runner and speedrunning documentarian SummoningSalt says on Bluesky. “Huge amounts of speedrunning history will be lost if we don’t take action. Even if you’re under 100 hours, play it safe and download. It’s 100 hours for now, but who knows in the future. Also I think Twitch chat on all these highlights will now be gone forever, unless there’s somehow a way to archive it? Just a really sad day for speedrunning…”
Streamers have until that April 19 cutoff to download or export their videos before they’re forcibly cut down to that 100-hour limit. In theory, it’s relatively simple to move those over to a platform like YouTube – but some of these archives are going to have years-long backlogs to deal with, and users who’ve left streaming but contributed to some part of speedrunning history in the past might never get the chance to save their efforts.
If you’ve watched any of SummoningSalt’s videos, you’ll know that archives of speedruns are a pretty essential part of how the scene’s history is documented. We often conflate game preservation with the continued availability of specific old games, but preserving game history is as much about hanging onto community stories and events as it is the games themselves. Twitch is about to make that a lot more challenging.
Super Mario 64 speedrunners thought a trick that requires landing on a spot “the width of a red blood cell” was virtually impossible – now it’s been done blindfolded.
