It’s becoming increasingly difficult to obtain a Twitch partnership these days, to the point where even the CEO of Twitch had their application rejected.

In a tweet earlier today, Twitch CEO Daniel Clancy revealed that they decided to apply to the Partner Program secretly, in order to see what the outcome would be.

Clancy stated, “For anyone that got denied being a Partner from Twitch, don’t feel so bad. Just got my Partner application denied. Did not tell anyone I was applying. Need to keep at it and hopefully get there one day.”

The tweet included a screenshot of the rejection email, which acknowledged that reaching the Path to Partner Achievement is a significant milestone, but the livestream company couldn’t offer a partnership to their own CEO “at this time.”

The email explained, “Evaluating your channel, it looks like your recent viewership has been fluctuating significantly, and we are looking for consistency rather than occasional spikes in viewership. You should aim to consistently average 75 viewers per stream, not including any viewership from hosts, raids, front page, or embeds.”

However, the email also assured that rejection does not hinder the chances of securing a partnership in the future. It encouraged streamer “DJClancy” to apply again if Daniel continues producing great content and growing their community to be more consistent.

This year has posed challenges for Twitch, with several new features experiencing issues, and layoffs occurring in March and earlier this month.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Twitch director of community marketing and production Mary Kish admitted that the company is currently in a “trust-building period.”