Twitch

New Cyberpunk 2077 Mode Will Help Streamers Avoid DMCA Takedowns

It’s been a long month for Twitch streamers, who’ve spent the past 30 days weathering an ongoing DMCA storm with few signs of reprieve. Today, CD Projekt Red announced that it’s added a new mode to Cyberpunk 2077 with this show-stopping dilemma in mind. During the latest installment of long-form Cyberpunk commercial series “Night City…

Streamers Baffled By New Twitch Option To Buy Affiliate Status

The latter portion of Twitch’s 2020 has been characterized by two seismic shifts: a big push to make money off ads and deals, and creator-unfriendly capitulation to the music industry. The company’s latest announcement, a deal with music label Monstercat that allows streamers to purchase affiliate status instead of earning it, combines both. Monstercat outlined…

Twitch’s Digital Convention Was A Day-Long Commercial That Left Streamers Feeling Frustrated

Its location, size, and Pokimane pizza lines have varied, but since 2015, Twitch has hosted some form of convention every year. 2020 is not like other years, to put it mildly. Of all activities people could choose to perform in our pandemic-stricken nation right now, conventions might actually be the most out of the question.…

Twitch Apologizes, But DMCA Fiasco Continues With Punishments For In-Game Sounds, Deleted Clips

Twitch’s past three weeks have been bleak, to say the least. Late last month, the company abruptly purged thousands of streamers’ videos and advised them to delete all remaining clips in advance of a massive music industry DMCA crackdown—one it had known about for months, but failed to adequately warn streamers about until it developed…

Pokimane’s New $5 Donation Cap Sends Ripples Through The Twitch Community

Giving money to streamers can be weird. It makes sense when a streamer is a scrappy up-and-comer for whom even a few coins in the cup can make a difference, but we live in an era in which big streamers are millionaires with exclusive contracts and brand deals. While popular streamers have expressed awareness of…

When Even Mourning Is Live: What Happens To A Famous Twitch Streamer’s Channel After Death

Tuning into Byron “Reckful” Bernstein’s recent daily Twitch streams, you wouldn’t immediately suspect something’s amiss. He’s front and center, playing World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, League of Legends, or any number of other games. Fans frequently make playful remarks, use emotes, and laugh at or with him. But the illusion doesn’t last long, nor is it…

Botched Twitch Promotion Just Pisses Off Streamers Dealing With DMCA Issues

For perhaps as long as Twitch has existed, there has been a myth: On exceedingly rare occasions, if the stars align perfectly, the ever-popular “Kappa” chat emote will turn gold. Some have suggested that a single Twitch user receives golden Kappa abilities every 24 hours. Others believe you have to fulfill highly specific prerequisites in…

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Streams On Twitch With Hasan Piker And Pokimane, Draws Over 430,000 Viewers

It began on Monday with a simple question: “Anyone want to play Among Us with me on Twitch to get out the vote?” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked on Twitter, and nearly every even vaguely left-leaning streamer on Twitch answered. Mere hours later, AOC had a verified Twitch channel with hundreds of thousands of followers. Tuesday…

Twitch DMCA Purge Deletes Thousands Of Streamers’ Videos

It’s finally happening: Twitch is taking action against copyrighted music—long a norm among streamers—in response to music industry pressure. Today, hundreds of streamers received emails from the company stating that videos or clips in their back catalogues had run afoul of copyright rules, resulting in deletion. This, it seems, is just the beginning. Something similar…

Twitch’s Latest Horror Sensation, Phasmophobia, Has Streamers Screaming (At Each Other)

It’s not uncommon for horror games to take off on Twitch. Usually they’re flashes in the pan: The janky P.T.-alike du jour grabs eyeballs for a few days and then quickly descends back into the poorly-lit pits of obscurity. Phasmophobia is different. Sure, it’s inspired by P.T., and yes, it’s janky as all get out,…

Report: Employees Accuse Twitch Of Indifference To Sexual Assault, Harassment, And Racism

In a new report by GamesIndustry.biz, current and former Twitch employees recount issues of racism, sexism, and assault at the company that they say were never properly dealt with and often even enabled by a white bro tech startup culture. GamesIndustry.biz spoke to 16 employees that span the streaming platform’s history, and their stories paint…

Streamers Concerned Twitch’s New Unban Request Feature Will Just Lead To More Harassment

Fact: No chat user in the history of Twitch has ever believed they were justly banned. But generally speaking, a streamer or moderator did, in fact, ban them for a reason. Despite this, Twitch has introduced a new feature that allows viewers to appeal their bans and get a new lease on their life of…

Twitch is introducing a new feature that gives streamers access to rights-cleared music. “Soundtrack by Twitch” will circumvent the DMCA takedown issues that have plagued streamers for years (and especially recently) by giving them access to Twitch-curated songs that the company actually has the rights to include in broadcasts. The feature also separates music into…

Twitch Is Winning The Battle Against QAnon, Despite Only Suspending A Few Far-Right Channels

Earlier this month, Twitch temporarily suspended a channel called Patriots’ Soapbox. The channel is not enormous, generally pulling 20-50 concurrent viewers over the course of its 24/7 talk show-style streams, sometimes spiking into the 100 range. But Patriots’ Soapbox is notorious: Some credit the organization behind it, which has bases of operation on many different…

Twitch Removes Stereotypical Emotes Meant To Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month

Earlier today, Twitch announced several initiatives to kick off National Hispanic Heritage Month, a 30-day period for celebrating the “histories, cultures, and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.” As part of this, Twitch added the ability to customize emotes with accessories from those cultures,…

Twitch Streamers Are Furious About New Mid-Stream Ads They Can’t Control

The internet is a hell dimension powered by unchecked data collection and advertisements. In an ideal world, ads would be kept to a minimum, allowed only on the backs of magazines people keep in their bathrooms, which nobody actually reads. But even in this fallen world, there’s a point at which ad proliferation becomes ridiculous.…

Navy Twitch Stream Spirals Out Of Control Due To Slur, War Crime Jokes [UPDATE]

Up to this point, the U.S. Army and Navy’s recruitment efforts on Twitch have been fraught to say the least, but over the weekend, the latter courted outright disaster. During a Saturday evening stream of Twitch mega-hit Among Us, players named themselves after America’s atomic bombing of Japan in 1945 and the N-word. During the…

Chess Is An Esport, According To Twitch Star And Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura

Sometimes it’s the small sprinkles of strangeness that stand out the most. If you had told me several years ago that 2020 would bring daily disasters of incomprehensible consequence, I probably would have believed you, because we’ve been trending in that direction for a while now. The idea of an esports organization signing a chess…

Twitch Suspends Leafy, The Banned YouTuber Who Harassed Pokimane

LeafyIsHere is a creator known primarily for picking on other creators. Last month, he was permanently banned from YouTube for repeatedly violating the company’s harassment policies after a series of videos about Twitch star Imane “Pokimane” Anys—one of which kicked off a hashtag campaign around the existence of her supposed, secret boyfriend—as well as a…

Ninja Is Back Exclusively On Twitch

After a months-long period of “will he or won’t he” with two determined suitors,Twitch and YouTube, streaming megastar Tyler “Ninja” Blevins has announced that his post-Mixer streaming return will happen “only” on Twitch. Blevins made the announcement on Twitter today with a tweet and a brief trailer “A new chapter, only on Twitch,” he wrote.…