Tag: Video game culture

Twitch Mega Streamer xQc Signed By Gambling Company For $100 Million

Twitch’s biggest streamer, Félix “xQc” Lengyel, is signing with the company’s newest rival, Kick, a streaming platform that offers better revenue splits and also appears to be centered around online gambling. The non-exclusive deal is valued at up to $100 million over two years, and is the latest and biggest blow to Twitch as creator discontent continues to mount.

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As first reported by The New York Times, the agreement will pay out $35 million per year, with $30 million in additional incentives available if xQc hits certain benchmarks. As Dexerto points out, this would make it the 12th biggest annual payout in all of sports, putting xQc right ahead of Kevin Durant.

Kick is a streaming platform startup funded by online gambling companies including Easygo Gaming and Stake.com. Following Twitch’s crackdown on gambling promotion last fall, the platform attracted big names like Adin Ross, BruceDropEmOff, and Trainwreckstv with its lax rules and 5/95 revenue split for creators. It’s not yet clear if Kick is profitable or how it plans to become so, but it has managed to benefit from a backlash against Twitch as the Amazon-owned platform has sought to more aggressively monetize the people making content for it.

A “child of Twitch” raised in its often-toxic chat, xQc started in the world of League of Legends before moving on to Overwatch, briefly competing in Blizzard’s Overwatch League before eventually being released from the Dallas Fuel after a series of suspensions for offensive comments. He pivoted to being a full-time content creator in 2018, with this mix of high-level play, unfiltered remarks, and an endless penchant for controversy turning him into Twitch’s most-watched streamer by 2021.

By 2022, leaks revealed that xQc had earned $8 million from subscriptions on the platform. That same year, he lost $1.8 million in a single month from online gambling. While his contract with Kick doesn’t preclude him from streaming on Twitch, the latter has a rule against simulcasting, making it unclear how much time, if any, xQc will still devote to the platform that helped turn him into a star in the first place.

“It’s time,” xQc tweeted on June 16, when his new partnership with Kick was announced. The post included a video promising his content would remain unchanged on the new platform. Directly below that was a retweet showing support for streamer Nickmercs, who’d recently come under fire for making anti-LGBTQ+ remarks.

Ethan Gach

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June 16, 2023
Big-Name Twitch Streamer Amouranth Got Banned Again For Some Reason [Update]

Update 5/5/2023 1:30 p.m. ET: After just 24 hours, Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa’s Twitch channel has been reinstated, Dexerto reports. Don’t expect to watch previous livestreams, though, as all of her VODs have been nuked. All that’s left for now are clips clipped by her fans. Original story follows.

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Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa, one of Twitch’s top-performing and most popular female streamers, has been yeeted off the platform. She was hit with what appears to be a temporary ban on May 4, though the reason is unknown.

Read More: The Surprising Reason Twitch Star Amouranth Hasn’t Ditched NSFW Content (Yet)

Amouranth is a household name on Amazon’s livestreaming platform. With over six million Twitch followers (and millions more across Instagram and YouTube), Amouranth is easily the purple streamer’s most recognizable female creator next to Imane “Pokimane” Anys. She’s been in hot water before, particularly for regularly streaming in skimpy bikinis, but that hasn’t stopped her from charting highly on Twitch. Despite receiving a few bans in the past that lasted no more than a couple of days, Amouranth consistently pulls in thousands of absolutely down-bad viewers. Yeah, she’s beautiful, but she’s also entertaining and wholesome, so it’s no wonder why folks create waiting rooms for and replays of her livestreams. Unfortunately, her main channel is currently unavailable on Twitch.

Amouranth’s Twitch ban seems temporary for now

As spotted by Dexerto, Amouranth is now banned for the first time since October 2021. As is customary when a creator gets booted off the platform, their channel displays the standard text: “This channel is temporarily unavailable due to a violation of Twitch’s Community Guidelines or Terms of Service.” Interestingly, she hasn’t streamed since at least May 1, suggesting that perhaps something in one of her videos-on-demand (VODs) led to the ban. However, because her channel has been nuked, you can’t view her content, so there’s no way to determine, at least for now, why Twitch decided to ban her.

At the time of this writing, Amouranth and Twitch haven’t publicly said anything on the matter. Kotaku has reached out to Amouranth for comment. A Twitch representative told Kotaku that it doesn’t comment on specific individual streamer bans.

Despite this lack of explanation, Dexerto posited an interesting theory that might explain the ban. The publication speculated that the burgeoning drama between Amouranth and fellow streamer Adriana Chechik, which escalated on April 27 as Amouranth responded to Chechik’s calling her “a fucking cunt” by saying she wanted to fight her in a ring—most likely a reference to Creator Clash, an annual charity boxing event that started in May 2022—could be the reason for Amouranth’s latest Twitch ban.

According to Twitch’s community guidelines revolving around violence and threats, any violations of its rules on or off the platform could result in a temporary suspension or a permanent ban depending on the severity.

“Acts and threats of violence are counterproductive to promoting a safe, inclusive, and friendly community,” the guidelines read. “Violence on Twitch is taken seriously and is considered a zero-tolerance violation, and all accounts associated with such activities on Twitch will be indefinitely suspended.”

Read More: Amouranth Can’t Be Your Girlfriend, She’s Building An Empire Beyond Twitch

Amouranth isn’t the only big-name creator to have been yeeted off the platform recently. GTA streamer Bruce “BruceDropEmOff” Ray was banned three times this year, with his latest exile happening on May 3. Internet personality Dalauan “LowTierGod” Sparrow was banned at the tail end of April. And both Cloud9 streamer Hans “Forsen” Fors and Kai Cenat, the new King of Twitch, were temporarily banned last month before their channels got reinstated a week later. Twitch seems to be clapping tons of popular streamers right now.

Levi Winslow

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May 5, 2023
Huge Dong Makes Appearance During Streaming Awards Show

Screenshot: Twitch

Spanish streamer TheGrefg is one of the biggest stars on Twitch, so much so that he recently held his own awards show that drew almost two million viewers. And everyone watching was, for a moment, treated to a big ol’ ASCII penis.

First, some background. TheGrefg has almost 20 million YouTube subscribers. Over 11 million Twitch followers. Even if you don’t know who he is because he doesn’t’ speak your language, the dude is one of the most popular streamers on the planet; we wrote about him in 2021 when he “obliterated the all-time Twitch viewership record” in a clip…revealing his own Fortnite skin:

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 record that beats not just individual channels, but entire games.

The event we’re talking about today—called Premios ESLAND—is actually the second year running that he’s been able to host his own awards show specifically for Spanish-speaking streamers, streaming and related events/stunts. And it’s quickly become a huge event; this year’s show drew 1.75 million viewers, and that’s not counting the folks in attendance watching it live.

Look at this crowd! That’s Mexico City’s famous Auditorio Nacional, and TheGrefg packed it out for the show:

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Anyway, being the second time he’s run one of these shows—and that he lives on the internet—you might think he or his producers would know not to cut to the live chat on the big screen up on stage. Yet this year he did just that, and as you can see in the video below, he regretted it about as quickly as a human can register the sensation:

In the interests of accuracy and truth in reporting, here is the NSFW image:

Screenshot: Twitch

“ha”

Luke Plunkett

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January 30, 2023
Nobody Was Ready For This Twitch Streamer’s Answer To ‘Show Feet’

What would you do if a random stranger asked to see your feet? Probably chuckle awkwardly and start walking faster. Streamer Nyy did neither. She had a better idea, and her Twitch chat will never be the same again.

“Feet please,” asked Twitch user sissy6668. It’s a common refrain in online chats, but one that’s rarely answered. Internet DJ Nyy, formerly known as Nyykage, shockingly obliged mid-way through a set on yesterday’s livestream. The next thing the chat knew, Nyy had thrown a leg up on her desk with a foam lobster flip-flop on her foot. “This what you’re looking for?” she asked right before the beat dropped.

The Twitch chat went wild, and folks on Twitter did too once Nyy clipped the moment and set it loose into the briny waters of the internet. The nicknames quickly proliferated—lobster floppers, flopsters, crustacean 3000s—as did people’s amazement. “THIS WAS A MASTERPIECE!” responded one person. “The absolute definition of never let them know your next move, a plo[t] twist at every turn! IT SENT ME LMAO.”

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What can I say, people are weird about feet. Especially on Twitch. Searches for “Streamers’ feet” have a combined 73 billion views on TikTok. There are YouTube videos entirely about rating different streamers’ feet. Some streamers have even gotten banned for showing their feet.

That’s allegedly what happened to Thai Twitch streamer JustKethJustKeth. She claimed Twitch banned her for three days earlier this month for flashing her foot. She was letting viewers pay to spin a wheel that would make her do certain things, including show off her stumps. “It’s just a meme bruh,” she tweeted at the time.

Though as Dexerto points out, Twitch does have strict rules against things like “fetishizing behavior” and selling sexual content on the platform, which is vague as hell but, well, welcome to Twitch.

Nyy, on the other hand, managed to turn the entire thing on its head. “The Lobster Floppers gifted from my mod were not always loved but in the short span of one whole day they have become family,” she told Kotaku in an email. “Warding off bad vibes, feet inquiries, and most importantly, providing effortless fashion.”

No doubt the flopster fan cams won’t be far behind. “Everyone needs a pair of Crustacean 3000’s in their closet come 2024,” Nyy wrote. “Lukewarm trolls can not thrive when you already possess the weirder arsenal.”

Ethan Gach

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January 27, 2023
A Whole Damn Book On Millennial LAN Parties

If you are old enough to remember LAN parties in their heyday, you will remember how complex (and amazing) they were. If you are not, you’ve probably heard old people speak about them reverently, in hushed tones, making them seem almost mythical.

While people of course still hold them—sometimes in huge numbers!—the advent of online multiplayer has pretty much killed them off as a cultural touchstone. And now that we’re 20 years past their prime, now is as good a time as any to take a good, historical look at what they were, how they worked and what they actually meant to everyone involved.

That’s what LAN Party, by Merritt K, is doing. Published by the always-excellent Read Only Memory Books, it’s going to examine the glory days of the scene, around the turn of the millennium, and will feature a ton of photos documenting those dorky, heady times. Here’s the pitch:

LAN gatherings of the late 1990s and early 2000s evolved from the necessity for multiplayer gamers to come together at physical meet-ups, lugging their bulky computers or game consoles along with them.

In addition to documenting the nostalgic era of LAN parties, the photographs in this book are unique artefacts of the peculiar cultural and technological moment, when gaming was tipping over from niche hobby to mainstream obsession. They reveal not just the home décor and personal fashion styles at the turn of the millennium but a different world, one that existed before the internet took shape and we started carrying it around with us in our pockets.

Many of the photographs included in LAN Party were taken using early digital cameras at limited resolution. To make these images look their best in print, we have employed AI-enhancement software – an emerging technology that allows the upscaling of low-resolution images with spectacular results – to make the first full-size photobook on this beloved subculture.

As someone who was there, Gandalf, 3000 years ago, this sounds incredible. Funding for the book is up on Volume, and you can pledge/order your copy here.

Luke Plunkett

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November 8, 2022
Corsair Apologizes After Rep Calls YouTuber’s Review Comments ‘Bullshit’

Screenshot: YouTube

Corsair has publicly apologised after a “member of staff” was found last week to have called sections of reviews of the latest RTX 4090 graphics card—made by both Gamers Nexus and Guru3D—”total bullshit”.

The drama arose last week when the hugely-popular hardware channel Gamers Nexus posted a review (and some benchmarks) of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition. In that video, they say plugging in only three of the card’s four cables (in case your PSU for whatever reason only had room for three 8-pin connections) would lock you to 100% performance, and that only by plugging in all four would you be allowed to overclock the card. Guru3D’s review says much the same thing.

Not long after, Discord comments left by a Corsair staffer went viral. They called both Gamers Nexus and Guru3D’s claims “total bullshit” and “misinformation”, while also saying both users and “the press” were both “confused” about the card’s power and overclocking claims. The full comments, as shared by Gamers Nexus, read:

QUESTION: Has anyone else seen the misinformation about the sense pins and the magical 600W unlock from anyone other than GamersNexus and Guru3D or is it just those two sites? I need to throw Nvidia a couple links showing them how confused user… and the press… are about their smart sense pins.

Total bullshit and they don’t even realize it. Yes. The adapter has two sense wires. Yes. The card works with only one sense wire attached. It’s because it’s a 450W card. It’s not because it has the ability to be ‘unlocked’ requiring the second sense wire.

The card simply doesn’t know. It’s not intelligent in that way. It only looks for one sense pin.

In a follow-up video, Gamers Nexus addresses those “bullshit” claims:

EVGA Left At the Right Time: NVIDIA RTX 4090 Founders Deep-Dive (Schlieren, 12-Pin, & Pressure)

While the staffer’s comments weren’t exactly professional, a company rep talking shit in private about members of the media is, as we’d all wager, nothing new. What got Corsair to publicly have to walk this one back, however, was the fact that…Gamers Nexus and Guru3D were right. To a point—their claims only apply to Nvidia’s own 4090 cables, not those made by third parties like ASUS or Corsair, which may explain the confusion here—but technically correct is still correct.

Prompting Corsair to issue an official apology on the company’s social media, which goes so far as to call the staffer’s comments an “outburst”:

It has come to our attention that a member of Corsair staff recently made inflammatory and incorrect comments regarding Gamers Nexus and Guru3D’s understanding of the Nvidia RTX 4090 power connector.

These comments do not represent Corsair as a company, and we regret both the form and content of the individual’s outburst.

We’ve worked with both Gamers Nexus and Guru3D for many years and hold both in high regard in terms of their professional conduct and technical abilities.

We apologize unreservedly for the improper conduct of our employee and will be taking steps internally to remind our team of the high standards we have for them when interacting with the media and end-users.

For their part, Gamers Nexus have accepted the apology, and are ready to “move forward”:

While Guru3D’s EIC Hilbert Hagedoorn says “Guys, it’s the web; everybody has opinions. He was wrong, apologizes for that, and for me, that’s the end of this story.”

It’s very funny to me that these companies keep taking shots at Gamers Nexus when their videos keep turning out to be entirely accurate! If you’re more technically-minded and would like a more detailed explanation for what exactly led to all this—it really is a small detail in the grander scheme of things—the best run-down I’ve found is here.

Luke Plunkett

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October 16, 2022