Twitch streamer, 'Disguised Toast' of Hearthstone fame, made an announcement earlier today on Twitter. He will no longer be allowing viewers to donate to him on stream, this includes both currency donations and Bits.
"[I] Always feel bad when I end the stream and realize I didn't acknowledge someone's dono because I got too focused on the game." He explained in a brief tweet, continuing with the statement that viewers should "Give your money to charity or a smaller streamer-"
While most replied with support and praise for Toast some Twitter users were not as convinced. One reply going as far as to say this was a mistake on his part, noting that many donators might not give their money to charity and instead suggested that Toast should take the money and donate it to charity himself.
This would not fix Toast's original problem with donations. Some viewers can see donations as a quick way to get the attention of the streamer with a question or comment and when those comments are not read or the questions not answered, streamers can feel burdened by guilt when they do not acknowledge the generosity of their community, accompanied by the ridicule that Twitch Chat can often act with when a streamer misses a donation, many can see why Toast decided on this going forward in his community.
Will this hurt his numbers? Disguised Toast peaked at over 20,000 viewers streaming Teamfight Tactics, and easily held 16,000+ over his 7 hour stream today. He gained 170+ subscriptions and if anyone in his community was concerned about no longer being able to meme through text-to-speech, you will be happy to know his resubs have TTS enabled.
Being the current top streamer in the Teamfight Tactics category and having over 6,000 subs at the time of his announcement. It seems that this will undoubtedly only be a positive change for him and his community going forward. As he said, he is rich already.