Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez achieved what many non-gaming figures have tried and failed to do, and managed to successfully crossover onto Twitch. As part of a bid to get viewers to vote, she played a rousing game of Among Us on a new Twitch channel with several other popular streamers, and accrued several hundred thousand viewers — all of whom she encouraged to go vote. Anyone want to play Among Us with me on Twitch to get out the vote? (I’ve never played but it looks like a lot of fun) — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 19, 2020 The purpose of the stream… This st ..read more

Amazon today announced its entrant into the world of cloud gaming with Luna, a streamingservice that lets you play new AAA games on your devices with no downloads. It remains to be seen if the company can compete with the substantial competition it faces in this sphere. Introducing Luna, Amazon’s all new cloud gaming service. Luna makes it easy for you to play amazing games on the screens you already own. pic.twitter.com/yMcHh8dImf — Amazon News (@amazonnews) September 24, 2020 Luna will be available on Fire TV, PC, Mac, and iOS devices (the latter through “web apps”), with Android coming soo ..read more

From Twitch to Mixer, and now back to Twitch once more: Tyler “Ninja” Blevins today revealed that, after his rather public break-up with the site one year ago, he’s returning to Twitch exclusively. I know, there wasn’t really much doubt, but it’s still good to know. A new chapter, only on @Twitch pic.twitter.com/cv2qFFFI0p — Ninja (@Ninja) September 10, 2020 Ninja announced the move on Twitter, and Twitch backed him up with a tweet of its own. He’s apparently signed a multi-year deal with Twitch‘s parent company, Amazon, to stream on the platform exclusively — a surprisingly chummy arran ..read more

Now that Microsoft has closed Mixer for good, its streamers have to decide once and for all where they’re going. Two of Mixer‘s biggest stars — who both used to be two of Twitch’s biggest stars — have returned to their former platform to much rejoicing. While Twitch may not have been a perfect home, this shows it’s still the biggest game in town. Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek both made surprise jumps to Mixer last year — Ninja in August, Shroud in October. At the time, it seemed like an almost inexplicable move, given how popular both were… This story continues at ..read more

Amazon today announced it’d be renaming its Twitch-based extras program for Amazon Prime subscribers. So goodbye, Twitch Prime. Hello, Prime Gaming. New name, same awesome benefits. ? #PrimeGaminghttps://t.co/AeAwWpk1Ba pic.twitter.com/pR0KDGTr85 — PrimeGaming (@primegaming) August 10, 2020 Bezos’s baby has been making more of a push into the gaming industry in the last year or so. It’s making more games, for starters. While its summer release Crucible came with almost no fanfare and its upcoming MMO New World has been pushed back to next year, it’s definitely hungry for s ..read more

US military forces have recently joined Twitch tto share live gaming streams of their esports teams and to interact with viewers who may be interested in joining the Army, Navy or Air Force. As it turns out, they haven’t exactly been playing by the platform’s rules, and now they’ve drawn the ire of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The NY Representative is set to file an amendment to the House Appropriations bill which will prevent these military forces from using funds guaranteed by the bill to “maintain a presence on Twitch.com or any video game, esports, or live-streaming platform.” What’s th ..read more

We have to talk about Twitch. Specifically, we have to talk about the problem of predators on Twitch. Over the weekend, several people came forward on Twitter to describe incidents of harassment, assault, and coercion by Twitch streamers, YouTubers, eSports players, and other people in the gaming industry. The floodgates appear to have been opened by several women in the Destiny community describing the threatening and creepy behavior they’d experienced at the hands of one streamer. Within a day, several others came forward with stories of other streamers who’d done the same or worse. Mo ..read more

Twitch today revealed that, in a bid to keep its community “safe and healthy,” it’s put together a safety advisory council to help fix its rules and its increasingly unruly viewers and streamers. What exactly they’ll do remains to be seen, but Twitch‘s myriad problems mean the platform has to try something. We’re taking a big step forward for community safety. Meet the new Twitch Safety Advisory Council. Made up of Twitch creators and online safety experts, the council will advise us on policy updates, new products, healthy streaming habits, and more: https://t.co/HwPo0aanCr pic.twitter ..read more

For every star Twitch streamer with thousands of viewers there are thousands of channels putting on a show for an empty audience. There’s no shame in it, that’s simply how things are. But now there’s an app that helps you encourage small-time streamers by randomly connecting you to channels with no viewers. Enter Twitch Roulette — it’s like Chat Roulette of sorts, but without any of the penises. That, and it has been specifically designed to filter through streams with no viewers, and connect you to them. The web-based app is pretty simple. You get referred to a stream, and if… This sto ..read more

Facebook can’t seem to help trying to infiltrate every possible iteration of social media, and since its acquisition of Oculus, the company has been keen on capturing a corner of the gaming market too. Today the company is making one of its largest pushes into gaming, debuting the Facebook Gaming app in the United States to take on the likes of Twitch, YouTube, and Mixer. The New York Times first reported on the news Sunday. The company has been testing a Facebook Gaming app in Southeast Asia and Latin America over the past 18 months, but this is the first… This story continues at The Next W ..read more