Skip to main content

Loyalty System: The Complete Guide (Setup, Leaderboard & Points)

Updated

Purpose:
The StreamElements Loyalty System helps you engage viewers by allowing them to earn points for activities like watching, subscribing, and tipping. These points can be redeemed for rewards, contests, and giveaways, and tracked on a community leaderboard — enhancing viewer interaction and retention.

Table of Contents

What is Loyalty?

The Loyalty System is a feature within StreamElements that allows streamers to grant viewers points for certain activities, such as watching the stream, subscribing, tipping, and more. These points can then be redeemed for rewards set by the streamer.

Enabling Loyalty

  1. Log in to your StreamElements account.
  2. Click Loyalty > Loyalty settings.
  3. Enable Loyalty by setting the toggle to "Loyalty enabled".

Features of the Loyalty System

  • Points Accumulation: Viewers earn points by watching the stream, following, subscribing, or other actions set up by the streamer.
  • Stream Store: Viewers can redeem accumulated points for rewards set by the streamer — from a text-to-speech message to physical goods. Redemptions can also be shown as stream alerts. See our Stream Store Guide for full setup.
  • Customization: Streamers can customize point earning rates, reward costs, and redemption options.
  • Leaderboards: Showcase top viewers based on points earned, fostering healthy competition (see below).
  • Watchtime: Enabling Loyalty lets viewers track time spent watching the stream. Viewers accumulate time every 10 minutes, as long as they're visible in the viewers list. They can check their current watchtime with !watchtime in chat (a default command).
  • Giveaways: Create giveaways and let viewers buy tickets with their points.
  • Contests: Predictions viewers can participate in, betting points for a chance to win more.
  • Integration with Chatbot: Commands can be given a cost, only letting viewers with enough points use them.

Loyalty Settings

The loyalty settings page has a few customization options for you.

You can choose the name of your currency, how many points viewers earn by watching, a multiplier to grant subscribers more points than regular viewers, event bonuses, and a way to prevent certain viewers from earning points.

Notes & Points Cap

  • Points are granted every 10 minutes.
  • Viewers only earn points if they're visible in the viewers list.
  • There's a limit on how many points a viewer can have: 2,147,483,647. Going over that number can cause points not to save correctly or display incorrectly, so we recommend keeping point grants and rates well under it — see our Loyalty Troubleshooting guide for details. Points also need to be positive values.

Leaderboard

Your leaderboard provides various views of your community's standings based on their loyalty currency.

Key Features

  1. Points Management: Adjust a viewer's points directly.
  2. Leaderboard Tabs: Navigate through different tabs for insights into the standings.
  3. Twitch Extension: Customize your leaderboard using the Twitch extension (see below).

Accessing the Leaderboard

Go to the 'Loyalty' section of your dashboard and click the 'Leaderboard' tab.

Once you have Loyalty enabled and active viewers, you'll see:

  1. Public Leaderboard: View the leaderboard page visible to both you and your viewers.
  2. Give Points: Add points to a specific Twitch username.
  3. Reset: Resets the leaderboard, but does not affect watch time.

Leaderboard Tabs

  1. Current Leaderboard: Points earned from watching the stream and participating in chat mini-games.
  2. All-Time Leaderboard: Points earned exclusively from watch time.
  3. Watch Time Leaderboard: Total minutes viewed by each viewer.

Edit or Delete Entries: on the right side of each leaderboard, you can edit or delete individual entries.

Setting Up Commands for Your Leaderboard

You can set up specific commands to manipulate and track loyalty points for your viewers:

  • !setpoints USERNAME AMOUNT — sets a total amount of points for a viewer.
  • !givepoints USERNAME AMOUNT — lets a viewer give points from their own stash to another viewer.
  • !addpoints USERNAME AMOUNT — adds the specified amount to a viewer's existing points.

Setting User Levels: configure who can use each command based on user level — for example, set !givepoints for everyone, and !addpoints/!setpoints for moderators only.

Watch Time Notes

  • Enable Loyalty: required for both points and watch time accumulation. Watch time increments every 10 minutes during live streams; it does not accumulate during reruns.
  • Retroactive Watch Time: Twitch does not track watch time retroactively, so it can't be applied to a viewer's total after the fact.
  • Active Status Requirement: viewers must be logged into their StreamElements account and type in chat at least once, so the bot can recognize them as active.
  • Avoid Collapsing Chat: collapsing chat on Twitch removes viewers from the chat users list, so they should avoid this to keep earning points.
  • Full-Screen Viewing: viewing in full-screen mode can also remove viewers from the user list, preventing them from earning watch time points.

Leaderboard Twitch Extension

Enable the Extension:

  • Navigate to your Creator Dashboard on Twitch.
  • Go to 'Extensions' under 'Discovery' to search for and install extensions, or view 'My Extensions' for already installed ones.

Activate and Assign Panels: once installed, activate the StreamElements Leaderboard extension and assign a panel to display it on your Twitch channel.

Edit Panels on Your Twitch Channel: go to your Twitch channel's 'About' section and toggle on 'Edit panels' to create a panel for the extension.

Configure Extension Settings: in your Twitch Extension manager, click the cog wheel icon on the StreamElements Leaderboard extension to customize displayed panels, default options, and periods or usernames to filter.

Adding a Schedule (Optional): add a schedule based on your timezone to automate when specific panels are displayed. The scheduled panel becomes the default one shown on your channel.

Notes:

  • The extension only starts gathering data from chat interactions after installation, activation, and configuration — it won't display past information.
  • If you see 'No Data' where you expect information despite the account and extension being active, contact StreamElements support via the contact form.

FAQs

Q: How are a viewer's loyalty points transferred after they change their username?
A: When a viewer changes their Twitch username, their points automatically transfer the first time they type in chat with their new name. If they don't transfer automatically, see our Loyalty Troubleshooting guide for how to move them manually.

For issues like viewers not earning points, inaccurate watchtime, or the points cap, see our Loyalty Troubleshooting guide.

Additional Resources

Related to

Related articles