Twitch

Popular WoW Streamer Hires YouTubers Who Leeched Off His Stream To Run Official Channel

If you search any popular Twitch streamer’s name on YouTube, you’ll find countless videos scraped from their streams. Of these, some will likely come from the streamer, but many are the product of users who upload content that is not, strictly speaking, theirs. Recent YouTube changes, however, are apparently making that more difficult. Instead of…

Scammers Are Impersonating Popular Twitch Streamers

Anybody can make an account on Twitch. It’s a quick, simple process that takes only a few minutes. You (a super villain, in this hypothetical scenario) might be wondering what’s to stop somebody from naming an account after a popular streamer and, say, scamming a bunch of people. Not much, it turns out. Over the…

Psychiatrist Brings Streamer To Tears During Confessional Stream

Everyone could benefit from therapy, especially streamers. While popular streamer Byron “Reckful” Bernstein’s on-stream conversation with Dr. Alok Kanojia was not an officially designated counseling session, it resembled one at times. Bernstein is a former top World of Warcraft player and current streamer who’s now working on his own online game, Everland. Over the years,…

Twitch Loophole Is Still Inflating Views

Saqib “Lirik” Zahid, who has 2.5 million followers on Twitch, is the last streamer to need a viewbot. Nevertheless, over the last couple of days, his fans and followers wondered whether he’d somehow succumbed—this week, his average 27,000 viewer count for November shot up to a huge 76,000 for no discernable reason. Zahid felt the…

Twitch Streamer Gives Away $5,000 After Failing To Catch Shiny Pokémon In 15 Hours

You win some, you lose some. Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you. Long have these sorts of aphorisms existed in the cultural lexicon. Now, thanks to popular streamer Jeremy “DisguisedToast” Wang, we’ve got a new one: Sometimes you catch the shiny Pokémon as part of two streams that last…

First Streamer To Hit 60 In WoW Classic Kicked From Top Esports Organization For Stealing Item

Before the tail end of August, Daniel “Jokerd” Gobey was basically a nobody. Then he won the worldwide race to hit level 60 in WoW Classic and became an overnight Twitch sensation, with over 300,000 people tuning in to watch his big moment just three days after Classic’s launch. But the 22-year-old player from Malta,…

Everything You Always Wanted To Know About The ‘Omegalul’ Emote (But Were Afraid To Ask)

Some memes explode into the collective consciousness with no remorse or regret, frothing at the mouth and daring hapless bystanders to remain out of the loop. One way or another, you’ll learn what they mean, and you’ll get sick of them in two weeks, just like God intended. Others, however, slink around in their own…

Another Popular Streamer Leaves Twitch, This Time For YouTube

Popular content creator Jack “CouRage” Dunlop is leaving Twitch, he announced today. Unlike other recent Twitch departees, he’s not going to Mixer. Instead, he’s struck a deal with YouTube and will stream exclusively there. In a video announcing the change, CouRage—who has already been on YouTube since 2013 and has 1.86 million subscribers—described wanting to…

Twitch Streamer Explains Why Painting Her Body On Camera Isn’t Sexual

The equation underlying Sophia “Djarii” White’s Twitch stream is really pretty simple. She loves video games, art, and makeup, so she combines those things to express herself, resulting in intricate paintings where her body is the canvas. White’s talent is immediately clear, and yet, she has courted no small amount of controversy for simply doing…

Twitch Star Shroud Moves To Mixer

While it’s possible to split hairs all day over which metrics definitively determine whether someone is the top streamer on Twitch, there’s no denying that Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek is one of the platform’s biggest stars. Or, he was. Now he’s moving to Mixer. Grzesiek has a Twitch follower count of over seven million and a…

Facing Burnout, Stress, And Health Issues, Top Twitch Streamers Are Taking Extended Breaks

Last year during E3, streaming megastar Tyler “Ninja” Blevins took two days off from his regular schedule. A blip on the radar in the grand scheme of things. It cost him 40,000 paying subscribers. This seemed to issue a grim warning to other streamers: Take time off at your own peril. Recently, though, it’s begun…

Donald Trump Has A Twitch Channel Now

Donald Trump got a Twitch channel, from which he’s currently livestreaming a rally in Minneapolis. This is how we live now. As of this writing, Trump’s channel has almost 9,000 followers, and about 8,700 are watching his rally in Minnesota. The chat is moving rapidly, but there are walls of “IMPEACH,” as well as a…

Twitch Explains How Another Shooting Got Livestreamed On Its Site

Today, an armed gunman in Halle, Germany attacked people outside of a synagogue on Yom Kippur, one of the holiest days on the Jewish calendar, killing two and injuring at least two others in the process. He livestreamed his attack on Twitch, during which he referred to himself as “Anon” (likely referencing 4chan or 8chan)…

Trans Streamers Lead Fundraiser Ahead Of Landmark Supreme Court Hearing

Transgender nonprofit Trans Lifeline is running a streaming fundraiser this month. This week, in tandem with several events relevant to LGBTQ rights, the lineup will consist entirely of trans streamers. Trans Lifeline runs two programs: a crisis line serving and staffed by trans people and a program offering guidance and financial assistance for trans people…

Twitch Stars Are Becoming More Like Regular Celebrities, For Better Or Worse

These days, Twitch streaming is an avalanche that drowns potential viewers in a daily rush of new names and faces. No matter how much you watch Twitch, you’ll never be able to keep up with even a fraction of the tens of thousands of partners and their daily streams, which generally last multiple hours. As…

I Waited In Line For Two Hours To Have Pizza With Pokimane

The sun is bright. Blinding, almost. It is late afternoon on the last day of TwitchCon, and I have been waiting in line for 40 minutes. I’m not in the convention center, but rather, about half a mile away, outside a San Diego pizza restaurant called Ciro’s. The line wraps around the building. Well over…

“You can ruffle your feathers at people. It’s fucking great. I love that game! Who plays Goose Game?” Blink 182 bassist and vocalist Mark Hoppus bellowed to a cheering crowd at last night’s TwitchCon party. The band headlined the party, which was open to all attendees and took place in a stadium in San Diego.…

Tucked away in the furthest back corner of TwitchCon, there’s a Blockbuster booth. Yes that Blockbuster: the mostly-defunct video rental store. What is this ode to entertainment’s now-distant past doing at a convention dedicated to the cutting edge of its present? Advertising an officially-licensed Blockbuster board game, it turns out. It’s a ‘90s-stolgia party game…

Twitch Is Making Ads Less Annoying

Twitch, like so many other platforms on the “free” internet, runs on ads. These ads are annoying as hell. They also represent a raw deal for the majority of streamers. Soon, however, both those things are going to change. As part of today’s TwitchCon opening ceremony, the company announced a slew of upcoming changes, including…

“There’s no reason why they shouldn’t have an accessibility tag, or an “a11y” tag—Twitter speak for accessibility. If Twitch is listening, please give us that tag. We’ve been asking for over a year now,” said streamer AccessibleGamer during TwitchCon’s “Streaming With Disabilities” panel. He added that most Twitch tags describe streams themselves—not streamers—but there are…