Twitch frustrates the hell of out of me. Honestly, I think it's the worst streaming platform that I've ever encountered, although Discord is a close second.

It's very difficult to actually contact Twitch support. They should give out prizes, if you can actually weed your way through the "Contact Us", rather than having to post in a forum.

I HATE the fact that my user name and password isn't enough to log in, and that a 6 digit passcode is required too.

Additionally, I follow a couple of poker players on Twitch and get notifications when they're streaming. Here's the kicker though: If you don't catch them while they're streaming, you can't watch the past episodes - only highlights, from what I can tell.

Is this essentially supposed to be a cash subscription only site now?

It's up to streamer if you can watch the vods.