April’s been wild for Twitch this year. Viewership records have risen to new heights on the platform and Alinity shocked the world with a viral nip-slip – by far the biggest story of late. VALORANT’s closed beta went live and Riot partnered up with Twitch by giving users a chance to snag a key. Although people came in droves, fake accounts and misleading streams plagued the service. All of this and more in April’s livestream news roundup.
Alinity Did An Oopsie
There’s really no sugarcoating this one. Alinity was livestreaming a Just Dance session on Twitch when something went terribly wrong. She started messing with her shirt and accidentally lifted enough of it to reveal her bare breast – breaking TOS again. As a reactionary measure she deleted the VOD immediately, but not before the internet lost its mind. The clip was archived, backed up, replicated, spread around, and (unfortunately) immortalized.
The big question on everyone’s mind was whether or not she would get banned this time – a supposed staff favorite, protected by the Twitch gods. Alinity quickly vowed to suspend herself from the platform, but eventually Twitch got the job done. Nudity is among the highest offenses of Twitch’s guidelines, so viewers were shocked to learn that it was only a 1-day suspension. Most would expect 3 days or a week, but she was unbanned in a cool 24 hours. Alinity kept her promise to stay away from streaming for a full 3 days, but many were left still questioning Twitch’s motives.
All things considered, she handled the controversy fairly well. She was unapologetic towards her haters, yet embraced the ensuing avalanche of jokes and memes. As a result, the ordeal died away quicker than expected. By the way, this all comes in the wake of Twitch’s clarified stance on nudity and attire on the platform – what are the odds?
VALORANT Has Been Good And Bad For Twitch
Riot’s highly-anticipated shooter VALORANT finally allowed fans to trickle into the closed beta early in the month. The system they used intertwined with Twitch, as users could gain access by watching streams with the “drops enabled” feature displayed in the VALORANT category. Couple this with a completely isolated world – and we’re talking new records.
Big streamers jumped all over the beta, drawing in massive crowds. LIRIK, Nadeshot, xQc – each one of the popular FPS streamers seemed to have a foot in the door by playing VALORANT at a high level. It’s even drawn in the likes of Zedd, who used the game as material for his first-ever stream on Twitch.
It hasn’t all been fun and games however, as the VALORANT beta key craze has had adverse effects on the platform. Streamers such as Devin Nash and Summit1g spoke up about the matter. Essentially, the influx of fake accounts (created to farm beta keys) and wanna-be streamers (who are running 24/7 VODs for views) are potentially harmful to the longevity of the service. Oh, and Dr Disrespect was among the many streamers who falsely claimed that they had drops enabled. Nevertheless, the boosted viewership is a short-term win for all of the involved parties.
Speaking of Summit, he experienced a rather unfortunate fallout with Monster Energy, but it seems that the Twitch streamer has recovered thanks to a brand new G-Fuel sponsorship.
Twitch’s Competition
Lastly, Twitch’s biggest dissenters are all still doing their thing. Shroud recently teamed up with Microsoft to create a pretty creative advertisement for Xbox Game Pass, positively received by fans. He’s also been jumping on the VALORANT train over on Mixer, recently pulling off an incredible 5-player ace.
Ninja remains active on Mixer as well, despite the clear drop in viewership since the transfer. That drop has been the subject of a good amount of jokes aimed at the streaming superstar – jokes that seem to be getting under his skin. Firing back on those who’ve been antagonizing him, Ninja made a rather untimely joke about being rich enough to buy his haters’ banks and foreclose their houses. He’s also come to blows with Tfue lately too, the latter leaking Mr. Beasts phone number and causing the shutdown of a charity tournament.
Perhaps most notably, however, was the surprise return of DisguisedToast on Twitch. He sent out a cryptic tweet about going live on the platform (despite being signed to Facebook Gaming) and fans were quite interested. When the ex-Twitch partner showed up for the first time in months, over 20,000 fans were there to greet him. He then performed a massive Chad move by stating that he just felt like Twitch streaming on a whim – promptly plugging his new edating series that would be continued on Facebook.
Overall, Twitch has to be reasonably happy with April’s madness this year. Sure, VALORANT’s success isn’t without drawbacks and Alinity’s controversies are the vehicle that many use to criticize the company, but at the end of the day – Twitch is maintaining its position in the limelight with plenty of user activity.
