Twitch

AOC’s Twitch Stream Ended With Reddit’s Millionaire Founder Trying To Talk About Being Poor

You’ve gotta hand it to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: She sure knows exactly when to hit the “go live” button on Twitch. Once again, sensing the perfect moment to address the gamerly masses, she spent a chunk of last night on Twitch talking with experts about the subreddit WallStreetBets’ shiny new technicolor meme coat. Reddit co-founder…

Twitch Is Cracking Down On Small (But Not Big) Streamers Who Made Channels Before They Turned 13

AverageHarry, a 15 year-old aspiring Twitch streamer from the UK, was in spitting distance of his dream. He’d had a breakout 2020, amassing an audience of nearly 90,000 followers, somewhat ironically off the back of a viral clip in which randos in a hotel lobby made fun of him for streaming. Late last year, he…

Ninja Sounds Fed Up

Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, still the streaming world’s best-known crossover sensation even years after the peak of his relevance, sounds like he’s getting a little tired of his every action being hyper-scrutinized by millions of people all the time. In a new profile by The New York Times that, of course, opened with the requisite reference…

Donald Trump has been indefinitely suspended from Twitch. After the Capitol Building insurrection, Twitch suspended the then-president, now-professional angry baby man (who is no doubt weeks or even days from a TV deal), but with the caveat that it would “reassess his account after he leaves office.” In a statement, Twitch said that it’s turning…

Twitch’s Latest Pogchamp Emote Is A Meme Lizard, Not A Streamer

Twitch’s plan to replace its problematic Pogchamp emote with a rotating cast of fresh faces? Pretty poggers. Twitch’s execution of said plan? Not poggers. Today’s Pogchamp? Also not poggers, because instead, it’s KomodoHype, a meme with some Pogchamp history. The thing about minefields is, you don’t generally realize exactly how much you’re going to regret…

Twitch’s Rust Boom Is The Streamer Crossover Event Of The Century

There is no predicting which game Twitch will catapult into the spotlight next. Last year, it was Among Us, a previously obscure party game about deception. Now, it’s Rust, a survival game that first came out in 2013, whose heyday was thought to have long since passed. These seemingly random flavors of the month have…

Twitch’s Pogchamp Removal Was Never Enough, And Now It’s Turning Into A Disaster

It’s not every day you hear about an enormous platform like Twitch swatting the face of one of its most popular emotes clean off and rendering the president’s account indefinitely inert, as it did in the aftermath of last week’s Capitol Building insurrection. But Twitch does do similar things from time to time, on a…

Spanish Streamer TheGrefg Obliterates All-Time Twitch Viewership Record

For years now, Twitch’s record for most concurrent viewers on a single streamer’s channel has been hotly contested, with streamers topping each other in slow-building increments. Today, however, Spanish streamer TheGrefg made everybody else look like they’d been wrestling for discarded peanut shells. As of writing, he topped out at nearly 2.5 million—a new all-time…

Twitch Suspends Donald Trump’s Channel To Prevent Him From Inciting ‘Further Violence’

In the wake of yesterday’s violent, conspiracy-fueled insurrection at the Capitol Building, Twitch has elected to indefinitely suspend Donald Trump’s Twitch account. In an email to Kotaku, a Twitch spokesperson explained the company’s rationale. “In light of yesterday’s shocking attack on the Capitol, we have disabled President Trump’s Twitch channel,” the spokesperson wrote. “Given the…

Twitch Removes “PogChamp” Emote

Twitch has removed the extremely popular “Pogchamp” emote from its service after the man featured in it, streamer Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez, tweeted some Extremely Bad Shit about the events currently unfolding in Washington. Here’s the tweet in question, in which Gutierrez directly calls for “civil unrest” for a “#MAGAMartyr” following a shooting that took place…

Covid Relief Bill Still Includes Felony Streaming Act, But Twitch Streamers Are Probably Safe

Earlier this month, Republican senator Thom Tillis managed to graft an act that would turn streaming copyrighted material into a felony onto the much-debated omnibus spending bill, which also includes a paltry second covid relief check, among many other things. After even more debate (and many concessions), Congress is poised to pass the bill this…

Streamers Flabbergasted After Twitch Partially Bans The Word ‘Simp’

It’s been yet another long 24 hours for Twitch—the latest in what’s shaped up to be an agonizingly long year for the company (and also everybody on Earth). Yesterday afternoon, Twitch held a live town hall with the goal of illuminating recent policy changes and features around DMCAs, sexual harassment, ads, and other hot-button issues.…

Twitch’s Top Clips Are Full Of Cyberpunk 2077 Nudity

Once the year 2077 rolls around, people apparently won’t bat an eyelash at unclothed dicks, breasts, and butts. In 2020, however, this is still very much an issue, especially on Twitch, where on-screen nudity frequently results in temporary or indefinite suspensions. But the platform does make exceptions for big games, with Cyberpunk 2077 being the…

Proposed U.S. Law Could Slap Twitch Streamers With Felonies For Broadcasting Copyrighted Material

The United States government is, as we all know, extremely functional. It’s so functional, in fact, that it regularly struggles to pass spending bills in order to prevent itself from shutting down. The latest “must-pass” bill, like many of its predecessors, includes controversial measures that wouldn’t be able to pass on their own, negotiated with…

New Twitch Rules Ban The Confederate Flag, ‘Unwelcome’ Comments About Streamers’ Appearances

Today, Twitch announced a “significant” update to its harassment and hateful conduct policies. The update takes aim at multiple blind spots in Twitch’s previous rules, adding clearer language about membership in hate groups, symbols like the Confederate flag, and sexual harassment. In a blog post, Twitch outlined the impending changes, which will go into effect…

Streamer Finds Extremely Rare Pokémon, Freaks Out

Sometimes, with everything on fire and no end in sight, it’s nice to have a wholesome moment to remind us there are still beacons of light in this cruel world. I think this clip of Twitch streamer AjentVee getting super mega ultra excited over finding a rare Pokémon fits the bill. Let’s watch. Nice! Right?…

Twitch Removes ‘Blind Playthrough’ Tag After Disability Criticism

Since 2018, Twitch has had a tag system that allows streamers to categorize their broadcasts according to their content’s contents and give viewers an at-a-glance idea of what they’re about. Tags also tie into Twitch’s still-rudimentary (but increasingly prominent) recommendation system. Until very recently, “blind playthrough” was one of these official Twitch tags. Now, however,…

Twitch Stopped Working Right After Fortnite‘s Big Marvel Event

Today, Fortnite players battled Galactus, devourer of worlds, in the culmination of the game’s Marvel-flavored fourth season. With the event ending on a cliffhanger, the biggest boy in a fictional universe of very big boys did not end up going down. But Twitch sure did. In the immediate wake of the event, which millions of…

WWE Crackdown On Wrestlers’ Twitch Accounts Is Causing A Lot Of Drama

Over the last few decades, numerous events have sparked talk that pro wrestlers in the United States might finally unionize. In 1986, Jesse “The Body” Ventura tried and failed to start a wrestlers’ union before WrestleMania 2. More recently, the financial hit wrestlers took from the 2014 launch of the WWE Network streaming service got…

Twitch Streamers Are Opening ’90s Pokémon Card Boxes Worth Thousands Of Dollars

When many of us were kids, popping open a pack of Pokémon cards and flipping to a holographic Charizard meant bragging rights or a hypothetical hundred dollars if we chose to sell it on eBay (or, in my case, if an eBay-addicted aunt could pry the card from my cold, dead hands). But now those…