GYGO: Riots Reach Twitch but Nice Things Happened Too

Hello and welcome to GYGO! I’m Kael, your local expatriated American, and it sure has been a week for news. Luckily most of it has been outside of the gaming sphere, giving me time to process and even start playing Ring Fit Adventure as a nice distraction. It’s been nice to be able to move my body in a fun way, even while mostly confined to my apartment. Anyway, here’s the news!

Twitch Responds to the Capitol Riots

Last Thursday I woke up at 6:00 am JST to live notifications of a riot at the US capitol building. As an American, it was incredibly stressful, and I’m sure the consequences are going to be far reaching. One of the most surprising effects (to me) has been some wide-reaching changes on Twitch.

Twitch obviously isn’t the gaming exclusive platform it started out as. In fact, during the riot HasanAbi’s political commentary stream topped the site for viewers. With over 225k viewers, this surpassed the popular Awesome Games Done Quick, an annual event dedicated to speedrunning games, running at the same time.

Following the riot, Twitch banned Donald Trump from using the site for the duration of his presidency. They cited a need to “protect our community and prevent Twitch from being used to incite further violence.” This coincides with a number of social media platforms banning or suspending Trump.

Trump’s presence wasn’t the only thing banned from Twitch. Following the riots Ryan Gutierrez, the face behind the incredibly popular “PogChamp” emote widely used to congratulate a streamer on an impressive feat in a game, took to Twitter to vent his support for the assault on the Capitol. He used the opportunity to call for “civil unrest” for the “#magamartyr,” referring to a woman shot and killed by police during the riot.

Twitch responded by removing the emote from use. In a statement on Twitter, they expressed that they did not stand for Gutierrez “encouraging further violence after what took place in the Capitol,” and expressed that they wanted the idea of the iconic emote to live on. They later announced a PogChamp emote that changes every 24 hours.

U.S.-China Trade War Hits PC Hardware

In 2018 the Trump administration began introducing tariffs on goods from China, which produces many of the PC hardware components used in America. At the time, many PC parts manufacturers filed waivers to be exempt from the import taxes, but in 2021 those waivers expired, causing the prices of graphics cards and motherboards to grow. At least, that is what’s happening with ASUS, who released a statement saying, “Our new MSRP reflects increases in cost for components. operating costs, and logistical activities plus a continuation of import tariffs.”

Preserving Video Game History

The Video Game History Foundation is putting out a call for developers to release the source materials of their projects. By source, they refer to any of the raw assets used in the game’s creation, including art, documentation, correspondences, and actual code. This comes as a result of efforts to preserve the source for future study. Frank Cifaldi of VGHF estimates that 90% of source materials for games made before 2000 is lost, cutting off many avenues to understand those games’ development. In an interview with Ars Technica Cifaldi said that “A really good source repo is the closest you’re ever going to get to being a fly on the wall during a game’s development.”

In Other News…

Ghosts of Tsushima fans flooded a crowdfunding campaign run by the Watatsumi Shrine on the island of Tsushima to repair an iconic shrine and tourist destination. The shrine was damaged by a series of unusually strong typhoons that caused widespread damage across Japan last year. The project asked for five million yen, but as of writing received over five times that amount.

Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection is investigating CD Projekt Red for unfair market practices. Specifically, the organization is looking into the misrepresentation of Cyberpunk 2077‘s state before launch and whether CDPR’s response to consumer complaints following launch has been sufficient. If found in the wrong, CDPR could be fined up to 10% of their annual income and be forced to offer refunds to consumers.

Limited Run Games is putting out a physical run of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game on PlayStation 4 and Switch. This includes both a standard and “Classic” edition, which comes with a special case and plenty of game goodies.

Jonas Neubauer, a streaming personality and seven-time Classic Tetris World Championship winner, passed away this week. Jonas was beloved in the Tetris community and his passing lead to an outpouring of grief on Twitter and elsewhere.

This cute story from Ian Walker at Kotaku reminds me why I got into MMORPGs in the first place.

Bioware executive producer, Christian Dailey, dropped some Dragon Age 4 concept art.