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ZEvent Passes 11 Million Euros in Its Final Edition
The tenth ZEvent is also the last. ZeratoR and Dach are closing francophone Twitch’s biggest charity marathon on purpose, at peak leverage.
ZeratoR, lors du ZEVENT 2025. Photo: Mickaël Schauli via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
ZeratoR surpassed 11 million euros in donations on Saturday, its second day, according to reporting by L’Info Durable, in the tenth and final edition of francophone Twitch’s largest charity marathon.
Adrien Nougaret, the streamer known as ZeratoR, and Alexandre Dachary, known as Dach, are ending the event on purpose. ZeratoR announced the closure in May 2026, at the finale of the ZLAN competition. This is not a shutdown forced by attrition or by a platform. It is a creator-built institution choosing its own last night while at peak leverage.
That distinction is the story. ZeratoR and Dach turned a living-room Twitch stream into a franchise that anchors francophone internet culture, and few creators ever reach the position to walk away at the top rather than fade.
The marathon runs September 4 to 6 from the Sud de France Arena near Montpellier. It concludes Sunday night. More than 330 creators are streaming across over 50 hours, franceinfo reported, a participant record.
L’Info Durable reported that the 11 million euro Day 2 total already sets an event record, with the 2025 edition standing as the Twitch world mark for a charity event. The closing total was not confirmed at press time.
ZeratoR described the scale on Saturday. He told AFP: “On a commencé en 2016 dans un salon, en branchant les câbles nous-mêmes, en faisant nos salades de pâtes, en dormant par terre.”
This edition widens the giving rather than narrowing it. The 2026 run splits its total among all 22 charities the event has supported since 2016, distributed through the Fondation de France. It is the broadest beneficiary slate in the marathon’s history.
ZeratoR has cast the ending as an opening, not a stop. In the official 2026 trailer, he said: “Ce qui s’achève, c’est cette aventure, pas l’élan, pas la cause, pas l’envie d’aider.”
The final total lands Sunday night in Montpellier.
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TwitchCon 2026 Schedule Puts Dan Clancy Front and Center
Twitch is sending CEO Dan Clancy into TwitchCon’s Creator Camp twice, once for Partners and once for everyone, after a two-week run of AI, sponsorship, and outage friction.
Twitch will open TwitchCon San Diego 2026 with a keynote from CEO Dan Clancy, then hand its Creator Camp track two separate sessions with the same executive, one gated for Partners and one open to everyone.
The company published the full programming schedule for the November 13-15 event at the San Diego Convention Center, the creator outlet Net Influencer reported. Clancy will share product announcements and updates during the Opening Ceremony.
The architecture of the schedule is the story. Creator Camp runs all three days on the business of streaming: securing sponsorships, monetization tools, analytics, audience retention, and the path to Twitch Partnership. Those are the exact levers a working streamer pulls to turn an audience into income. Twitch is teaching them in a classroom while the CEO takes questions down the hall.
The dual Clancy sessions read as a deliberate signal. Alongside the keynote, the track carries a session titled “A Chat with Dan Clancy” and a separate Partners-only conversation with the CEO, plus a Q&A featuring Chief Product Officer Mike Minton.
One access point for the top tier. One for the floor.
The schedule landed August 27, the same day Twitch went dark. A major outage hit web, chat, and video viewing services that afternoon, with Twitch’s own status page logging the incident at 20:09 UTC and labeling all three a major outage. A fix was in place by 22:03 UTC, and Twitch confirmed full resolution the next day.
The trigger was a viewership surge tied to the release of the Grand Theft Auto VI gameplay trailer, as reaction streams flooded the platform. The outage capped a policy year that tested creator patience.
Two weeks earlier, on August 12, Twitch introduced an opt-out setting that lets Amazon generative AI models train on streams, defaulting to on. Backlash from the creator community started within hours. Minton, the same executive booked for the TwitchCon Q&A, defended the default on a Patch Notes stream.
“If it was opt in, nobody would opt in. That’s honestly the answer,” Minton said.
The sponsorship push arrived days later. On August 20, Twitch opened Creator Sponsorships to all Affiliates worldwide through the Sponsorship Dashboard, extending brand-deal access down the ladder from Partners.
Clancy has run Twitch since March 16, 2023, when he succeeded co-founder Emmett Shear. His tenure has pushed monetization outward, capped by the May rollout of Monetization for All, which gave every streamer subs, Bits, and Channel Points without Affiliate status.
The Creator Camp curriculum mirrors the anxieties that drove this year’s friction: who gets brand deals, how the tools pay, what the data shows, how to keep an audience. Twitch is answering those questions in a room its CEO walks through twice.
Show hours run 10am to 7pm Friday and Saturday and 10am to 6pm Sunday, all times PST. Wristband pickup and a Partner Party open the weekend Thursday, November 12, the night before Clancy takes the keynote stage.
News
TikTok Adds Voice Comments, Polls and Photo Carousels
TikTok is turning its comment section into a voice, poll and photo surface, and the 1.7 billion daily comments it targets are a creator monetization signal, not a cosmetic tweak.
TikTok announced four new comment-section features Thursday, adding 60-second voice comments, creator-run polls, photo carousels and Live Photo replies across its platform.
The company detailed the rollout in a Newsroom post titled “Say More in the Comments.” TikTok said more than 1.7 billion comments are shared on the platform every day, the scale this overhaul targets.
For creators, the change is a business signal, not a cosmetic one. A comment section built for voice, votes and images is a comment section built for dwell time. Longer sessions and deeper interaction feed the engagement metrics that shape reach and ad-impression duration, the numbers that underwrite creator monetization.
Voice Comments are the headline feature. Users tap a microphone icon in the comment box and record a message up to 60 seconds long. Once posted, anyone can tap to listen.
That feature is rolling out globally over the next month, and it is restricted to accounts belonging to users 18 and older. TikTok is expanding a community tool and managing regulatory exposure at the same time.
Moderation runs underneath it. A TikTok spokesperson told TechCrunch that voice comments are subject to the same Community Guidelines as other content on the platform. The company said it uses human and automated detection, including speech-to-text transcription, to catch violations.
Comment Polls are live globally now. Creators can add a poll when commenting on their own video, choose up to five options, and set a voting timeframe. TikTok said results track in the comment section in real time.
The photo tools round out the bundle. Photo Carousel Comments let users add up to nine images in a single comment, up from one at a time, and roll out globally over the next month. Live Photo Comments, live globally now, let users upload a Live Photo that plays a brief burst of motion before the still image appears.
The design borrows from messaging apps, a lineage TikTok did not hide. In its announcement, TikTok framed the comment section as the place “where jokes get funnier, reactions get bigger, and total strangers connect in real time.”
Voice Comments and Photo Carousel Comments are expected to finish their global rollout around October 3, roughly a month after the announcement.
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Twitch Adds Clips to DJ Program, Ending Blackout
Twitch just reopened cross-platform discovery for its DJ Program, ending a two-year ban on clips and dangling a badge that expires September 15.
Twitch reversed a two-year content blackout for its DJ Program on September 1, letting DJ creators clip mid-set moments and share them to social platforms for the first time since the program launched in 2024.
The change is automatic. Twitch said clipping is now available to DJ Program creators, editors, and mods the moment they go live, with no opt-in step required. Clips can be made during or after a stream and posted straight to a creator’s socials.
For DJ streamers, the reversal reopens a growth channel that has been closed since the category went live. When the program launched, DJs who signed on had VODs, clips, highlights, and video uploads disabled on their channels, a contractual condition tied to the licensing deals behind the catalog. That left DJ creators with no shareable content and no way to feed TikTok, Instagram Reels, or X, the platforms where new listeners actually find them.
The old trade was steep. Twitch built the DJ Program on a first-of-its-kind partnership with Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music, and independent labels represented by Merlin, and the rights terms barred any recorded content. Discovery lived inside the DJ category and nowhere else.
Now the clips carry the parts that make a set travel. Twitch said clips capture a creator’s voice, crowd reactions, Chat hype, and any other non-music audio from the set, so the energy comes through even without the music itself.
The catalog effect matters here. Twitch cited more than 15,000 DJs building and monetizing communities on the platform when it announced the program in 2024, a number that had more than quadrupled since early 2020. Every one of them has been invisible off-platform until this week.
Twitch is pushing early adoption with a deadline. The company is offering a limited-time “Clipped That” chat badge to creators who download and share a clip to social by September 15.
The badge callout in Twitch’s announcement reads: “Unlock the limited-time Clipped That badge by downloading and sharing an epic mid-set moment from your stream to social by 9/15.”
The two-week window closes September 15.
