How To Remove Your Twitch Prime Badge

Can you remove your Twitch Prime Badge? Can you add it again if you change your mind? What other badges are available on Twitch. All these questions appear often on Reddit and in the SwipeTips mailbox and will be answered in this tutorial.

Twitch badges are a small but significant part of Twitch. Given to subscribers, staff, admins, moderators and bots, they appear next to your name in chat. Like many gamification elements, these badges can be a source of envy, indifference or ire depending on where you sit on the subject. Some people will do anything for a badge while others couldn’t care less.

Since Twitch decided to remove ad-free viewing from Twitch Prime, its status among users has declined drastically. So much so that a few users I know have removed their Prime badge from chat altogether and are allowing their current subscription period to expire before dropping it altogether.

If you’re in the same boat or don’t want to show your Prime allegiance for any reason, you can remove the badge from showing next to your name.

Remove the Twitch Prime badge from chat

I’m not a Twitch Prime member but I know people who are and watched one of them remove their badge from chat. It is simple to do but does not seem a universal setting. Once removed, joining some streams kept the badge hidden while randomly appearing on other streams. Your mileage may vary.

If you want to remove your Twitch Prime badge from chat, do this:

1. Join a Twitch stream.
2. Select the gear icon at the bottom of the chat pane next to Chat.
3. Select Edit next to your username.
4. Select Customizable Badge in the next window.
5. Select to hide your Twitch Prime badge.

You can hide any or all of your Twitch badges with this setting. As my test account doesn’t have any, you don’t see them in the screenshot but if your account has earned some badges, you should see them there.

Badges in Twitch

Badges aren’t a huge part of Twitch but they are there. There are a bunch of them that denote different roles you may have on a channel or globally if you’re a staff member.

Those badges include:

• A white spanner on a black background for Twitch staff.
• A gold star on a white shield for Twitch admins.
• A white axe on a green background for global moderators.
• A white camera on red background for broadcasters/streamers.
• A white sword on green background for chat/channel moderators.
• A white tick on purple background for verified users.
• A white diamond on a lilac background is a VIP.
• A white battery on a purple background is a Turbo user.
• A white crown on a light blue background is a Twitch Prime user.

It is that final one you’re removing in this guide.

Why the backlash against Twitch Prime?

So we have covered how to remove a Twitch Prime badge, but how about the why. Why is there such a backlash against Twitch Prime and why are people dropping their badge and their subs?

The reason comes from a change announced in the summer of 2018 that Twitch were dropping the ad-free part of Prime and the discount on games. One of the key advantages of using Twitch Prime was the avoidance of ads in streams. While not exactly intrusive, ads are everywhere and people will happily pay extra to not see them.

When Twitch said they were dropping the ad-free viewing option, it didn’t go down well. Subscribers had until the expiration of their current subscription last year to enjoy Twitch without commercials and then they would appear. After that, a further Turbo subscription would be required to view ad free. That’s an extra $8.99 a month.

Twitch initially said the move was to benefit streamers, yet the streamers themselves were not in favor of the move at all. Many leading streamers removed ads altogether from their streams.

The other minor benefit was the 20% discount on games for those who used Amazon Prime. Instead, a $10 Amazon store credit was offered instead. Fine on the surface but when you look closely, you see the credit can only be used on certain games at certain times. Not the full discount subscribers originally enjoyed.

Businesses change along with the market but this change seems out of character for Twitch. A company that has always said it’s on the side of the streamer and the gamer. Not so with this move. Even though it was announced over a year ago, people are still talking about it, including us!