As of last month, the age of NFTs was officially upon us. As of this month, it might be on its way out. Average prices have declined by as much as 70% since a peak in February, according to Bloomberg. That, however, has not stopped big-name streaming and esports figures from announcing their own NFT…
Many Twitch streamers have YouTube channels, and vice versa. They also have Twitter pages, Instagrams, TikToks, SnapChats, and basically every other kind of account under the sun. For years, Twitch has taken activity on other platforms into account when deciding to suspend or ban streamers, albeit inconsistently—and typically only when an infraction had also happened…
Twitch trends come and go, but one thing remains constant: the endless debate around what women should be allowed to wear on the platform. Now it comes in a summery new flavor: hot tub streams. Recently, streamers have declared these broadcasts the new “meta,” outraging the usual suspects—but also leading some female streamers to voice…
Sometimes, you just decide that you’ve gotta fix something, and you’re not going to rest until you’ve won a battle of wits and wills against a piece of plastic. Most of the time, though, you don’t have 80,000 people watching you do it. Today, Twitch star Ludwig Ahgren, trapped in the purgatorial “final” hour of…
Today, the top streamer on Twitch was forced to quit mid-stream because, he says, he forgot to pay his power bill. He is a millionaire. You hate to see it. These days, Félix “xQc” Lengyel is notably more mature than the guy who got booted from an Overwatch League team in 2018 after a string…
This week on Twitch, a stop sign became a saga. Stopsigncam, a 24/7 stream of a single intersection in Salem, Massachusetts where drivers regularly blow through a stop with no concern for their lives or others, blew up thanks to a viral TikTok. But at the peak of its popularity, it went offline. Since Wednesday…
For the past week and a half, Twitch star Ludwig Ahgren has been on the clock. Whether asleep, awake, or drowsily somewhere between, Ahgren has kept his stream running to fulfill the terms of a “subathon” where every subscription adds ten seconds to a timer. So far, he’s pulled in nearly $500,000. He says, however,…
A blue car pulls up to a stop sign. Against all odds, it briefly, miraculously comes to a halt. Twitch chat goes ballistic. Numerous people spam “I was here” as pogchamp emotes flood in. This is Stopsigncam, a Twitch channel that suddenly has over 125,000 followers even though it’s just a camera trained on a…
Yesterday, a shooter opened fire at the King Soopers store in Boulder, Colorado and killed 10 people. Not long after the attack, a streamer, Dean Schiller, arrived on the scene and broadcast to an audience that topped out at nearly 30,000 concurrent viewers. The resulting video has been viewed over 650,000 times. Despite the visible…
Today, Twitch banned and de-partnered Ali “Gross Gore” Larsen, a longtime streamer and subject of controversy, after sexual assault allegations old and new came to light last weekend. Allegations emerged after the 28 year-old Larsen, who’s been suspended by Twitch numerous times over the years, made a post on the RoastMe subreddit on Friday. This…
Ludwig Ahgren, a Twitch streamer with nearly 2 million followers, has never been one to shy away from stunts. His latest is especially audacious, albeit probably not great for his long-term health: He’s running a “never-ending” marathon stream powered by subscriptions. Each subscription adds another 10 seconds to the total amount of time he’s required…
It might be an understatement to say that popular Minecraft YouTuber and streamer George “GeorgeNotFound’’ Davidson had a weird weekend. Within two days, he got banned from Twitch, possibly un-banned, definitely banned again, and unbanned (again?). Why? “Harassment via username,” according to Twitch. Problem is, the only person he could have possibly been harassing was…
There’s elaborate performance art, and then there’s what renowned Twitch jester Jerma did over the weekend. In a truly inspired stream, he parodied the recent Pokémon booster pack craze by going out into the Nevada desert and pretending to excavate a chest seemingly full of unopened Pokémon cards from 1997. They turned out to be…
CodeMiko is nervous. I can tell because she tells me. “This is, like, my first interview ever,” she says over a Discord call. “I’m sorry, I’m a little shy.” It’s December of 2020, and Miko’s entire life is about to change. Miko does not know it yet. She is, after all, not a fortune teller,…
Today, Twitch released its first-ever transparency report, a lengthy, stat-based look at the platform’s safety initiatives over the past year. It contains some interesting, albeit granular, information about Twitch’s efforts to cut down on hateful conduct, sexual harassment, and even terrorist propaganda. But it also fails to clear the haze from the question that has…
Does life imitate art, or does art imitate life? It’s the chicken or egg question for the modern age, but after a certain point, the answer ceases to matter. That point, it turns out, is when you’re really fucking sick of doing real jobs inside a video game, as Twitch mainstay Chance “Sodapoppin” Morris can…
Earlier this week, it came to light that Twitch was running ads in blatant opposition to the Amazon warehouse worker unionization effort in Bessemer, Alabama. Streamers, who had no say in whether or not these ads appeared during their broadcasts, were outraged. Today, Twitch has removed the ads, saying that they never should have run…
Today, Twitch let viewers vote on a new permanent Pogchamp emote. A lizard won. Frankly, it was inevitable. KomodoHype first got to be Pogchamp for a day last month as part of the intermittently disastrous Pogchamp-a-day promotion that brought us to this point, which Twitch decided to run after the original face of the popular…
Twitch’s not-so-grand Pogchamp experiment is coming to an end. After replacing the conspiracy-addled face of the popular emote with 35 different Pogchamps in 35 days, Twitch seems to be on the brink of a more permanent arrangement. Tomorrow, viewers will be able to “decide what the future of hype looks like” as part of a…
Twitch streamers, Instagram influencers, and TikTokers just got a potentially very powerful ally: The Screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, aka SAG-AFTRA, one of the most powerful unions in Hollywood. Soon, influencers who create branded content will be able to qualify for union benefits. Speaking to Backstage, a SAG-AFTRA rep explained that…
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