The popular online streaming platform Twitch announced on Feb. 19 that they will be introducing a 100-hour storage cap for highlights and uploads starting on April 19, warning that users will have their content automatically deleted until it falls below the limit.

Twitch has announced a change due to the fact that “Highlights haven’t been very effective in driving discovery or engagement,” and the cost of storing thousands of hours of such content is no longer justified. Since Twitch is owned by Amazon, a leader in cloud storage and one of the wealthiest companies in the world, this decision has sparked criticism from streamers.

The update specifically targets highlights — the short clips created from live broadcast recordings (VODs) using the Highlighter tool to showcase notable moments — and any uploaded footage created with third-party services. Other types of on-demand content, including Clips and VODs (which are already automatically deleted), will not be affected by the new storage limitations.

Streamers who have already exceeded the storage limit will be able to download their highlights and uploads before the new restrictions take effect. After the change, content will be deleted in order of least to most viewed highlights.

To assist users in managing their content, Twitch is introducing a new storage tracker on the Video Producer page, as well as filtering options to sort highlights and uploads by length, view count, or creation date. Once the cap is fully enforced, users will not be able to exceed 100 hours of highlights and uploads.

“Introducing this 100-hour storage limit, which impacts less than 0.5 percent of active channels on Twitch and accounts for less than 0.1 percent 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,” Twitch explained.

This change will particularly affect Twitch’s speedrunning community, which has relied on highlights to preserve its history. Although highlights and uploads can be exported and re-uploaded to other platforms, the process is cumbersome and may disrupt how speedrunning records have traditionally been documented.

“Not just world records, but most every run submitted that was on Twitch is stored as a highlight on speedrun.com. That includes users who no longer run, no longer stream, no longer have an online presence, or may even not be alive anymore,” one Twitch user pointed out. “Crippling the highlights feature is going to be an unmitigated disaster for speedrun history.”