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Every streamer should have, at minimum, some foundational chat rules present in either their panels or new viewer disclaimer. With Twitch’s 30 million active users, chances are you are going to run into trolls. It’s an inevitable event everyone on Twitch has had to deal with. You as the content creator need that foundational baseline of rules to set the tone and boundaries to not only protect you, but any new and regular viewers. But if you’re having issues putting together a list, we have you covered with some of the best twitch chat rules with examples!
Best Twitch Chat Rules
As you scroll through streams, you’ll start to see common rules that are pretty universal for Twitch as a whole. Some of these common rules can even be found in the Official Twitch Channel’s chat rules and many other popular streamers. We would always suggest checking out Partnered streamers who vary from smaller to large audiences for reference.
Of course we also threw together some additional basic rules commonly found in most streams. These are pretty generic but will cover most of the basics, feel free to copy these and also try to add some additional wording to make them unique and specific to your own channel:
- No backseat gaming/spoilers
- No religion or politics
- Respect Chat Moderators
- No racism, sexism, or hate speech towards sexual orientation
- No self promotion unless approved by channel owner
- No spamming messages
- Do not write only in CAPS lock
- English only in chat (this can be replaced with your native language of course)
- Do not mention your age
- Do not post links without permission
- Do not ask to be a mod
- No badmouthing other streamers
- All channel bans are final
- Do not share any personal sensitive information
- Exercise Twitch Community Etiquette
- Have fun!
Why is Having Chat Rules Important?
At the end of the day, people come to Twitch to watch and enjoy people streaming video games or real life events. Finding a comfy place where they can chat among like minded individuals and have fun while watching some high quality content.
Then the reality sits in and if we’re being honest, most of the gaming community can be rather toxic. Having a strong set of chat rules establishes the culture of you channel and help attract the type’s of viewers you want to cater to, oppose to letting chat run rampant.
To give an example, my first week of streaming I was raided by a streamer with over 3,000 viewers. While an exhilarating experience due to the massive increase in chat activity, I had no moderators or channel rules established so of course all of his viewers started spamming adult video websites in my chat. This not only was breaking TOS but also created a very uncomfortable situation for the couple of viewers who were already enjoying the stream.
How Do You Enforce Chat Rules?
Having rules for your stream means nothing if you don’t enforce them. Especially if you are a smaller streamer just starting out, returning viewers can be exciting but always be wary of the types of viewers you keep around. A returning active viewer who is there every stream, but continues to make off handed jokes that violate your streams rules it may turn away new viewers and create an unpleasant environment. Best ways to avoid this are to remind them of the channel rules and if they continue the same behavior, ban them and move on. You as the streamer are responsible for your channel and maintaining the community guidelines of any social media platform you decide to stream on.
But lets not forget about THE most crucial resource to help enforce you channels rules, YOUR CHANNEL MODERATORS! Once you have a regular viewer who is willing to be apart of your moderation team, you can give them the authority to ban any would be trolls. A good stream doesn’t exist without a good set of mods who help navigate the discourse of the channel.
Another important way to assist enforcement is to FOLLOW YOUR OWN RULES and hold even mods to the same degree. Lead by example and a lot of the time viewers are sure to follow.
How Do I Update My Chat Rules?
There are two main ways to make your chat rules visible to existing and new viewers. You can create a info panel on your Twitch Channel’s about page or in the settings section of your creator dashboard. Its a good idea to have them listed in both spots, to cover yourself as the content creator and gives your viewers more than enough chances to review before chatting.
Creating a Rules Panel
First lets head over to our own channel’s page, and go the About tab. Click the “Edit Panels” toggle below your about section:
Next you’ll click one these boxes with the + in the middle, this will create a new panel in the “about” section of you channel.
Name the new panel, you can get creative or be boring like me and name it “Rules”. There is also an option to add any image you want, click “Add Image” to select a file from your PC.
From there, enter in all the rules you wish to have displayed on your own channel then hit submit.
Where can I get Free Twitch Panels?
If you ever need good free Twitch panels, there are plenty of free resources out there like Nerd or Die or even Canva has a guide on making Twitch panels that we would suggest checking out.
Nerd or Die’s site lets you either download free templates or create your own image panels that fit Twitch’s recommended sizes. They even give you a great explanation of Twitch’s markdown, which shows you how to change the shape and look of your text inside of your panel description.
Creating a First Time Viewer Agreement
If putting your channels Twitch chat rules in your panels isn’t your thing, something rather new Twitch implemented was the ability to create a one time viewer chat rule agreement. So when a new viewer opens your chat for the fist time, they have to agree to the channels rules before they can engage in chatting.
You can also link other promotional material in these as well, like encouraging new viewers to join your Discord or letting people know about your YouTube channel.
Lets go to our Creator Dashboard.
On the left hand side click on settings, then Moderation.
About halfway down, you’ll see the chat rules section. Enter in the rules you want to establish, then click save changes.
Now when a first time viewer wants to type in chat, they’ll be met with this viewer agreement!
Side note: You could also use this viewer agreement as another way to promote other social media platforms you are on, as well promoting your Discord server! A lot of potential to add some creative flare with this feature.
Alternative Ways to Share Chat Rules
The chat rules don’t necessarily have to be in ONLY in your Twitch panels or in a viewer agreement. There are plenty of other ways to promote the culture of your channel that might grab viewers attention better, simply by creating commands using your favorite channel bot!
List of good channel bots:
If you haven’t invested in a channel bot yet, we would heavily suggest you do so. They have a lot of features to automate mundane tasks and is also a great way to optimize your workflow. Rather that’s posting live notifications to Discord/Twitter or automatically taking appropriate action and banning viewers who use blacklisted language. Not to mention the cool amount of
Create Chat Commands
While this may seem like common sense, its often overlooked. Creating Twitch commands that anyone can use can be an easy addition to your stream. Using a simple bot like Nightbot, you can make a command in seconds. Just name it !rules and have the response be a short form layout of your channels rules posted via chat messages.
Make an Audio Command
There are a ton of great ways to play audio clips when live, either from the use of a chat command using one of the many good bots like Firebot or using the Sound Alerts Twitch extension. Record a fun clip of you reading the chat rules, create a command and let users play the audio clip so the entire stream can hear them!
Create an OBS Source Toggle Command
Now this is going to test how savvy you are as a streamer! Most bots like the aforementioned Firebot, or others like Streamlabs Chatbot and Stream Elements all allow you to create command triggers. These triggers tell OBS to display either a GIF or image loaded into the scene in OBS.
Using any imaging editing software like Photoshop or Gimp, you could create image outlining your rules and create a specific command to show the image source. So it would look like this once someone enters the assigned command:
Set an Event Timer in Chat
Set up a timed event or announcement to be posted by your bot of choice, reiterating the chat rules. Most bots allow you to set the reminder to trigger after a set amount seconds, or how many lines of chat have scrolled by. Like shown below, we’ve instructed Firebot to display an announcement in chat every 5,000 seconds or every 35 chat lines.
Once it hits that threshold, it’ll display the rules in chat for everyone to see!
Place the Chat Rules in Discord
This rule doesn’t necessary apply to just Discord, displaying the chat rules on any social media platform would work as well! But since Discord is probably the most widely used communications app out there, would be a good place to start. Not only is it a positive to get a new viewer to join your streams Discord server, but also gives them access to view the overall rules at any time. Just create a pinned message in a text channel named #rules.
How Many Chat Rules Should I Have?
There really is no standard or best practices for the amount of rules required for your stream. But the best practices most streamers use tend to align with the Twitch community guidelines.
Sometimes the best chat rules are in short form, typically summarized with a “don’t be a jerk and respect others”. Or if you’ve been scorned by the average toxic teenage Twitch user, a longer stricter rule set might be in order. You run into all different kinds of viewers on Twitch, some even hunt for streams with a lower viewer count specifically for the purpose of trolling.
Conclusion
We hope you found this guide helpful! With a good set of channel rules and a good team of moderators, you’ll create a fun and drama free stream that any viewer can enjoy. Now get out there and start streaming!
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