Features

Accounts

Glitch uses the phone's own accounts. A phone's SIM gets one the first time Glitch opens; players can set a password, log out, and log in to their account on another phone. Setting or changing the password signs every other phone out of the account, unless the player turns off Sign out of all other phones. A phone signed out from elsewhere opens Glitch logged out. Each account is a channel. The channel's name and username are the account's; the bio, avatar and banner are edited in Studio → Edit channel.

Watching

• Browse lists live channels, most watched first. Category chips filter it. Each card shows the channel's banner (or its face on its own colours), LIVE, the viewer count and how long it has been live.
• Following shows followed channels, live ones first, then the rest by when they were last live.
• Search finds channels by name. With nothing typed it shows the categories with how many are live in each.
• A channel shows its avatar, banner, bio, followers, tier and Partner check mark. Live channels have a Watch card; offline ones show the last stream's length, average and peak viewers. Channels can be shared to Messages as glitch://channel/<username> links.
• Watching shows the live picture with the chat below. The count is real viewers plus the simulated crowd. If the stream is full (25 real viewers by default) or the server's upload is busy, the viewer is told so and can still chat.

Chat

• Real and simulated messages arrive in one chat. Simulated chatters react to what the streamer does: crashes, deaths, speed, police, new areas, quiet spells, talking, the weather and the time of day, and to follows, subs and cheers.
• Emotes are written :name: and drawn by the app. Badges show the broadcaster, moderators, subscribers and Partners.
• Slow mode (seconds between messages) and followers-only mode are set by the streamer or a moderator; both skip them.
• Tapping a message offers Report. Streamers and moderators can also delete it, time out its author (1 minute, 10 minutes, 1 hour), ban them, or (the streamer) make them a moderator.
• A timeout keeps the viewer watching but silent. A ban removes them from chat and from the live video, and keeps them out of the channel's streams.

Supporting a channel

• Follow: free. The follower hears when the channel goes live.
• Subscribe: one month at Config.Money.subPrice, paid from the bank, up to three months ahead. The subscriber wears a sub badge in that chat.
• Cheer: pick an amount of bits, add a message, and it shows as an alert on the stream and a highlighted line in chat.

Money moves only on the server, only after the payment is taken, and the streamer's share (the price less the platform cut) goes to their pending balance at once.

Going live

Studio → Go live: a title, a category, the front or back camera and the microphone. The phone asks for the Camera and Microphone the first time. The camera shows full screen with the phone's LIVE bar; Glitch's dashboard sits over it. Only the phone that started a stream can put it on Glitch, even when two phones are logged in to the same account:

• viewers, real and simulated, and what this stream has earned so far
• new followers, subs and bits, and a hype meter
• why viewers might be leaving (AFK, going in circles, the same spot too long), when earnings start counting, and when the hourly cap is reached
• alerts for follows, subs and cheers
• chat with the moderator tools, and chat settings

A stream ends when the streamer taps End on the phone's LIVE bar, puts the phone away, leaves the app, dies or disconnects, or when it reaches the phone's longest-stream limit (60 minutes by default). The summary shows its length, average and peak viewers, follows, subs, bits, and what it paid.

How the audience works

Every three seconds the server samples each streamer: where they are, what they drive and how fast, their health, who is near, whether police are near or they are wanted, the game clock and weather (from a weather resource when one runs), and whether they are talking. From that and the category it works out how interesting the stream is right now. The simulated crowd moves toward a target set by the channel's popularity, followers, how often it streams, the category, the in-game hour, how long it has been live and that interest. Real viewers raise the target and speed up growth.

Idle streams lose viewers and stop earning. A streamer who covers no ground (stays within 25 metres, including going round in a small circle) and has nothing happening around them for three minutes is AFK, and an AFK stream earns nothing, even while talking or with other players nearby. Talking, chat and company still keep the crowd interested. Staying in one spot for twenty minutes with no real viewers makes the crowd restless. While the phone resource is not running, live streams pause and earn nothing.

After each stream, popularity moves toward the stream's audience, with every real viewer counting as five simulated ones, plus bonuses for real follows, subs and chat. A follow counts once per character and channel: unfollowing and following again, or following from another account of the same character, adds nothing, and a streamer's own character never counts. Popularity fades slowly after a few days offline.

Earnings and tiers

Ads pay per viewer per minute; simulated subs and cheers pay like real ones. These are held while the stream is live, capped per rolling hour and day (per channel and per character, so switching account does not reset them), and paid into the pending balance when the stream ends, if it lasted at least ten minutes and was not ended by an admin. Real subs and cheers go into the pending balance at once and are never capped. Studio → Cash out sends the pending balance to the bank, at least Config.Money.minCashout at a time.

Tiers (Streamer, Affiliate, Partner) are earned with followers, average viewers over recent streams and the number of paid streams. Higher tiers earn more ad revenue, keep more of each sub and cheer, and have higher caps. Partners wear the check mark.

Studio → Stats shows the pending and lifetime earnings, the way to the next tier, the caps used, and every past stream.

Notifications

"<channel> is live" goes to followers, and subs and cheers go to the streamer, as phone notifications that open the channel or Studio. The phone applies its own preview and Do Not Disturb settings.

Evidence

Real chat messages, follows, subs, cheers (with the amounts), deleted messages and cash-outs are kept on the phones involved, each naming the account that caused it. The phone records the streams themselves (who streamed, who watched, for how long). A phone police hold opens Glitch read-only: it can watch and read but not chat, pay, go live or change anything.