Playing Video Games for a Living: Coping with Emotional Tensions and Economic Precariousness Surrounding Live Streamers' Careers on Twitch

This study examines the working lives of live streamers on Twitch, focusing on the emotional labour, economic precariousness, and authenticity tensions that accompany turning gaming into a profession. Drawing on qualitative semi-structured interviews with 22 Italian streamers (9 men and 13 women) at varying career stages, the research positions streamers at the intersection of work and play. It argues that their careers depend on converting social capital and gaming capital into economic capital through a platform whose affordances, such as cheers, polls, channel points, and hype trains, gamify the relationship with audiences while leaving streamers with little control over the infrastructure on which they depend.

A central finding is the importance of an implicit pact between streamers and their communities, in which monetary support is framed as a means of sustaining better content rather than as exploitation. Streamers must perform this arrangement within what the authors describe as an "economy of authenticity," where viewers judge whether a creator is a genuine gamer with an authentic relationship to the audience or a self-interested monetizer. Participants also expressed frustration with Twitch's limited responsiveness to creators' needs, a grievance reflected in the 2021 #ADayOffTwitch and #NoStreamDay strikes. The gendered dimension is particularly pronounced, as female streamers balance sexist toxicity with the management of femininity and erotic capital to secure legitimacy.

The study contributes a sociological perspective to a literature that has so far been dominated by mental health, precariousness, and regional case studies. By centring streamers' own accounts, it highlights how emotional labour, boundary management between public and private selves, and career uncertainty shape the transformation of gaming culture under processes of professionalization and monetization.