Last year the NBA G League brought real-life professional hoops to Twitch for the first time. Basketball fans watched the game’s rising stars dazzle on the hardwood and many streamers co-streamed the broadcasts to their communities with their commentary and play-by-play. Even more used the official NBA G League Extension to make picks and take home bragging rights. This year the NBA G League is back on Twitch and there’s more of everything.

Co-streaming the games

This season, NBA G League games will air every Friday and Saturday from February 8 through March 23 on /nbagleague. That’s where you can tune in to watch the games with their original audio and play-by-play. But, this is Twitch and watching isn’t enough. That’s why co-streaming is enabled for every single game and everyone is invited to give it a spin. (For those who haven’t tried it yet, co-streaming is a great way to connect streamers with their communities around things they love. Streamers can put their unique spin on a broadcast other than what they normally stream to create a novel experience for everyone.) If you’re a streamer and want to give co-streaming a try, you can find a commentary-free broadcast to use on your co-stream at /nbagleaguecostreams.

Official NBA G League Extension

You can also get in the game with the new and improved official NBA G League Extension. It’ll let you view stats during games, earn points for tuning in and earn even more points when you ‘boost’ players you think will fill the stat sheet, and this year you can earn points as a community to rep your favorite co-streamer on the leaderboard. You’ll also get the chance to vote on the Twitch MVP of every match who will be interviewed on the court after the game.

Where to watch

You can watch the original broadcast at /nbagleague, or you can choose to watch Twitch Partners and Affiliates who are planning on co-streaming the NBA G League this year. So, if you’re looking for a more unique take on the action or just want to enjoy the game with a community you’re a part of, take a look at who’s co-streaming this week’s games:

Friday, February 8: Rio Grande V. vs South Bay at 7pm PT

21stevo * 29coast * 404_barny * 727_RoadRunna * about40gudguy * adammann * adroppedbomb * afullmetalmutt * ArcanaFGC * axiomaticcloud * b3hockey * beethappy * biggamebg * bigsam_12 * bloodthirstycheeseburger * bojedi * boogeyonline * BoxensDonutShop * bssix * budgenz * CadetCali * campfire_q * candygrace * chrishmas_ * christheredbeard * claymorrstv * cmonz11 * comfey * cruelrulestv * crumbreon * cwi5e * d1dino * daemoniumhd * dalemahathey * datwan84_ * deathninja80 * deelowe1stack * dethklok1637 * Devilin * dexva * djcwork * doc_unk * DonSavage_ * duhfishygod * eastymeetswesty * eemeraudee * ehhkayo * elabuelokraken * electricfizz1104 * emegamiing * epell1 * evanjako * exlasdesign * faakk * fufmorty * GameAttackTeam * gamingwithjeffb * ghostdevon * gidden35 * goldenstroketv * groovyshally * gyoor_ * highfee * hitcher_tv * hmzlife * huckleberryholliday * hydrafx * iiDev_Waffle * immortal * intenseyogurt * istriker95i * itsmeapollog * itsmikedevore * itzwednesday * ixKyuubii * j0rt * jocksandwich * jonahveil * JsW23 * jtacticsmusic * juis * JulzyTCK * just_titi * JustGonnaSend1t * kanyetwittee * kellzvl * kiddreftv * killadelphia * ks4_era * KShark13 * kycu * lameduckg * lazztheman * locriansensei * mambagatorgaming * manicslostcause * mannyjamesgames * markeydeee * master_of_chaos * MatafiedGaming * mattjsommers * mbeezy * mega_ran * metalicat206 * michaelsways * miketellica * mikewompz * mogeniord * Mr__G35 * mregregious * mropp9 * mrwaffleszzzz * nadedaxx8 * naes * NHL23 * nichelle1999 * noblegamingpr * nukehands * oannasun * officialaknight * og_shawn1 * oneaway_ * opdelusion * oricochet * pizzaologist * pnat_gaming * pokgiandmh * predeity * prettyph3nom * psik * quickfinesse * rdhannon * realmichaelpulman * realsosaguwop * refernocarnage * rgs_kingsane * rishiswaz * rizeupgaming * robthekiid * rockarchyTV * ron2wavvy * rpgmookie * rusel2 * rutzo * saltmajor * seelo_is_king * senseiswishem * shayneomac1 * shoenice * sickdegenerate * siggyv * silverfox72gaming * sky_louii * slyfoxc * smurfcattt * sneedgaming * souchi * soxfan * squattinggamer * stefanisfresh * stylezgtdajuice * superlimitbreak * swacks * synxes * tenshisusanoo * the_skarm_ * thedoubletakeofficial * thefreemexican * thegamergirls3 * thelegacy2305 * themrmoet * therealreekz902 * theszylard * thetravelinggamer * thisisjorgo * toobiginhere * tosher * tricky7 * trikkiikkin * ttvzien * tunta95 * twisttedvisuals * wecameasbecca * weedweed * writemoney * xithricite * xjonesylove * xKINGCITYx * xresurr3ctedx * xxa_swishxx * xxbeerandgamesxx * xxnotoriousgaming * yasonog * youngjay272 * YT_Joey * zechx_ * zing145 * zodiac7 * zombiebuttnugget * zyrf1

Saturday, February 9: Memphis vs. Texas at 7:30pm PT

727_RoadRunna * about40gudguy * AceofAllTrades01 * adammann * adroppedbomb * afullmetalmutt * agent_madx * allsum_prime_fm * ArcanaFGC * ashtins * aspect2 * axiomaticcloud * ayyhaddd * b3hockey * beastmode23 * biggamebg * bjpofficial * Blessious * bloodthirstycheeseburger * bojedi * boogeyonline * BoxensDonutShop * broncoskid3 * bryceistubing * budgenz * butt3rnutsquash * cackai2 * CadetCali * cagedpony * campfire_q * candygrace * candyh * casterclan * ChampagneSyrup * cheerybomb * christheredbeard * cm_nightbear * colextraiin * comfey * CrossFireX * cwi5e * d1dino * daemoniumhd * dalemahathey * dannykobe3 * dannyrocks969 * dariond2 * DazPlay1337 * deathtohippies21 * deelowe1stack * dexva * djcwork * djpuck * doc_unk * DonSavage_ * duhfishygod * dzbenya * ea_wolves * eastymeetswesty * eemeraudee * elabuelokraken * emegamiing * enigmaredux * epell1 * evanjako * exoticpenguin_420 * FinReally * flash_hound * flypicklerick * fosterthekidd * fufmorty * garrettthepatwa * ghostdevon * goldenstroketv * groovyshally * gyoor_ * hitcher_tv * hmzlife * HomerAladdin * iHateFLAWLESS * iiDev_Waffle * im_reesetv * immortal * impur_ * intenseyogurt * irozyi * istriker95i * itsmeapollog * itsmikedevore * itszaybebe * j0rt * jaydee_717 * jfoxyj * jocksandwich * jtacticsmusic * juis * JulzyTCK * just_titi * JustGonnaSend1t * kanyetwittee * kellzvl * killadelphia * KShark13 * kycu * lambnrice * lameduckg * lazztheman * Lospollostv * markeydeee * master_of_chaos * MatafiedGaming * mega_ran * metalicat206 * michaelsways * miketellica * mogeniord * mregregious * mrwaffleszzzz * mstjones87 * mystakyle * nadedaxx8 * naes * NHL23 * nichelle1999 * noblegamingpr * notzakrat * oannasun * officialaknight * og_shawn1 * OhNoNotAgain * oldvulpine * oLockey * oneaway_ * overkill2016 * ph0rmat * pirateztv * pizza_plays_ * pizzaologist * pnat_gaming * pokgiandmh * predeity * ProspectHD * psik * rdhannon * realmichaelpulman * realsosaguwop * redsquirrel64 * refernocarnage * rgs_kingsane * rizeupgaming * Rjwatts14 * rockarchyTV * rpgmookie * rutzo * RynoJB * saltmajor * savvysilky * seantysean * seelo_is_king * sickdegenerate * silverfox72gaming * singlewhitemale * sixmacs * sky_louii * slyfoxc * smoovesdagod * souchi * squattinggamer * steezleb * stefanisfresh * stranger26 * stylezgtdajuice * swacks * synxes * tannerttv * texastrihard * the_skarm_ * thecoplacetogo * thedoubletakeofficial * thefreemexican * thegamergirls3 * thejpawn * thelegacy2305 * thelongrun_ * thenavidude * TheRealFGaming * therealreekz902 * thesherminator24 * theszylard * thetravelinggamer * thisisjorgo * tomatoeshead * tosher * tosk55 * Treygonite * tridentlyx * trikkiikkin * ttvzien * tunta95 * twisttedvisuals * unearthlywalnut * wecameasbecca * weedweed * whenitcountstv * writemoney * xithricite * xjonesylove * xKINGCITYx * xresurr3ctedx * xxa_swishxx * xxbeerandgamesxx * xxoptic83xx * yasonog * yonkukaido * young_gucci_56 * youngjay272 * zackhenry334 * zing145 * zodiac7 * zyrf1

If you’re a co-streamer and want to be added to next week’s list, please sign up here.

Learn more about co-streaming in general here.

The NBA G League returns to Twitch was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This week’s launch of Apex Legends is about to get a whole lot bigger.

We’re teaming up with Respawn Entertainment for the Twitch Rivals Apex Legends Challenge, featuring 48 Twitch streamers competing live for $200,000 in prizes. This two-part competition goes down on Feb 12th and 19th, and it’s the perfect chance to see which your favorite streamers are leading the pack in the new Battle Royale shooter that’s taking Twitch by storm.

Each event features 16 three-player squads. Streamers from North America and EMEA are representing their territories, with a total of 48 competitors. Each squad will compete to earn the most points, with 5 points awarded for each match victory and 1 point awarded for each kill. To win, streamer squads have to show they’ve mastered the unique abilities of the game’s roster of Legends, plus they’ll have to make the most of Apex Legend’s new additions to the Battle Royale genre, like Smart Comms for improved call-outs and Respawn Beacons for defying death.

We’ll guide you through the competition on /TwitchRivals as we keep tabs on each day’s action and point totals. But as always, you can watch and chat directly on the channel of any participating streamer if you want hang out alongside their community. So be sure to hit the follow button on /TwitchRivals and we’ll see you in the Outlands soon.

FAQ:

Q: When do these competitions take place?
A: They’ll happen on February 12th and February 19th.

Q: Which streamers are participating?
A: 48 streamers will be participating, including:

-DrDisrespect
-Sacriel
-TSM_Myth
-DisguisedToast
-RealKraftyy
-shroud

Q: Where can I watch?
A: Follow our spotlight broadcast on /TwitchRivals or head directly to the channel of any streamer who’s competing in the event.

Q: Where can I find more detailed information about the competition and competitors?
A: The official Twitch Rivals website is your best source for information, including the event schedule, format, and competing streamers.

Q: How can I learn more about Apex Legends?
A: Visit the Apex Legends website or follow the official /PlayApex Twitch channel.

Get ready for the Twitch Rivals Apex Legends Challenge was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If there’s one thing Twitch loves almost as much as gaming, it’s anime. And also arguing about anime. That’s why we’re excited to announce that this year’s Crunchyroll Anime Awards are being exclusively streamed on Twitch. And this time, everyone is invited to co-stream the show with their communities.

The show airs live from San Francisco on Saturday, February 16 at 6pm PT. Tune in to see winners crowned in categories like Best Fight Scene, Best Director, Best Animation, Anime of the Year, and many more. You can even make predictions on who you think will win with the Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2019 Extension and rep your community on the leaderboard.

Co-Streaming the Show

The official broadcast will air on /crunchyroll, but many Twitch streamers will be co-streaming the awards and adding their commentary to the proceedings. If you haven’t tried co-streaming yet, it’s a great way to connect streamers and their communities around things they love besides what they normally stream. You can see a full list of streamers who have signed up to co-stream the Awards at the bottom of this post. And if you’re interested in having your channel listed below you can sign up here to be included on our next update.

If you want to learn more about how to co-stream, head on over to Twitch Creator Camp for more info.

Crunchyroll Anime Awards Extension

Knowing who wins each award is great, but correctly guessing who will win is even better. Especially when you can brag about it online. So don’t forget to try the Crunchyroll Anime Awards Extension when you watch the show. You can predict winners for every category and make sure whatever community you’re watching with gets represented on the leaderboard.

Crunchyroll is also offering a special prize for co-streamers who use the Extension. The co-streamers and their communities who guess correctly on each category during the Anime Awards will be entered to win up to 1,000 one-month Crunchyroll Premium memberships to be split among the voters.

Here’s the list of Twitch partners and affiliates who have indicated they’ll be streaming the show:

Partners:

2HAWKSS * abrownbag * aiikab * aphroDJiac * aroebe * averagegamer * ayashuffles * behindyouhorror * blackoreanate * blessrng * blondie * candygrace * Catfu * ceydaen * chickenprism * chozoninpo * chunandrice * cmaccari * coastward * cojagamer * cooterz * cuddleofdeath * d3n7y * daisyflux * data_dave * duxativa * dyohb * emmywithlove * fightincowboy * floe * funkmastermp * geersart * girlhero * girlwithyellowspoon * gmart * goldensplit * grammar * grimghul * gronie7 * hoddang2 * iamthanh * iKasperr * imelissa * itskuupo * itswoofy * jagolewahar * jakeeyexe * jassy * jiso * jonahveil * kaoiji * kidarkness * kingbrisk2k * kingkoinz * kun0 * kw3nji * Lawler * liberto * littlevelma * lixy * lost_pause_ * luhback * m00sician * maquannas * maw3rick * mayogax * mekabear_ * melterv * mfaplay * mithrie * moritu_on * mrchowderclam * Munchnplay * myre * naal89 * naes * nanito * nikatine * nittmv * nuja * ofnao * otiozero * ozarutwitch * paulinhohmachado * pixelsontv * quuut3842 * raeyei * realmaddox * relliktheclown * rizeupgaming * ronclaude * rukifer * runwyld * rustynai1 * samgreenmedia * scf3 * seikachu * Sekapoko * seriousgaming * shenpai * shiabun * sirvenomik * skydieray * slapsticklogic * smirky * snugzmeow * soloman * spiderdjango * sukidingels * SuperJoe * supr3m3_85 * tacticalintern * tamyhro * thejohnburk * TheSleepyDwarf * thetravelinggamer * tietuesday * topgun * trihex * tyler3p * ueligium * umidah * Vaecon * valuxitax * vio * weshunthesun * whiskeyy * wolfdnc * workingchef * Wraithyn * xxshinobazuxx * yandreaya * yellowapple7 * yuuie * zerinagaming * zico39 * zigarot * zyka11

Affiliates:

1kry * 1maddex1 * 1poseidon3 * 20xxrey * 2dxxloyal * 727_RoadRunna * abel_byrd * about40gudguy * acapulin2013 * ace_ofshadow * Ace_Wright * acebox * aced_us * adroppedbomb * advancedark * aeroshiva * AeroSMH * Afr0Tv * ag3n7_w1nd3x * agnamore * agreatbighug * aguabeuno * aguamyst * akaahri * akashi_mk2 * akilasltu * akkadiaan_ * ako1player * alantasdf * albi1985 * alexandra10122 * alihaiy1 * alkierek * alytreta * amaite * amatoryknight * ameliabaee * amelzeee * aminhavidaembits * amossy_ * anamoura * anarionkayto * anatorline * andyoclock * anearnestginger * angelicvoice7 * angrybananas * angryslugproductions * animevagabond * annatheoreomaster * anozirafire * ant_tony_ * antapt301 * anubisp * aokiihiroto * aphrooturtle * apoxa * aprilsamurai * ArcanaFGC * ardemo * ardinan * areja * arkaanaa * Arthurthe1234 * arunise * asapmattattack * ashtastic71 * asianpowwaaa1 * ataristars * atiyana83 * atticustrash * auroradrag0n * autobodymanftw * aweclarity * awesomw557 * aylinntv * aymiecakes * ayu_osaki * aziz_hammamethd * aznanimedude * azorion_tv * azumic_tv * b00700 * babenohaze * baby_bus * baesdart * baesuki * baguettemanntv * bakusanjrpg * BalticFlame * bamringo * Bankzey * barcdawg * bardeeno * barlarkay * barnz_live * baronsolace * basedmama * batchii * batsouls * BCGiant * beardlessdwarf2 * BeastBeardtv * beefshake * beefykrazo * beefytatersplays * beethappy * BekyCat * bellrngr * benbeatsgame * benny8westside * beradbeevan * bertybert * big_nickyg92 * bigboss117pr * bigdonskillz * biggerjohn * bignoobert * bigsam_12 * biohazard2481 * blackenedangel5 * blackghost8942 * blacklotus99 * blainethepaintv * blakethenerd * blasterrtv * Bloody_legacyx * blopmaw * blu3flam318 * bocc * bochieboi * bojedi * borimakto * BornFreeTwitch * bosslady089 * botrltv * boxst * bpcasts * br0xton * braiannalfonzo * brainstv * BrainToolShow * bramblelyon * braui93 * breadthabutter * breakingbao * breeniya * breezethruyou * brionacdragon * brittanyleigh * brokeman21 * Bruhsiah * brunohikikomori * bryceistubing * btsoda * buffgardengnome * BukanasRita * bullvight_ * bundif * bunmetal * burgertamagotchi * burkie4 * buttrknifeninjaa * byteknights * c0nnie1337 * cadamari * calghoat * calrntv * canaira * canal_do_alli * candyclipz * capitv0 * captainsrirachatv * captinrouge * catnaps * catpeachgg * cavalamanca * caviryan * cdtheprodigy_ * cegrillou * celestialvee * celionarduzzi * cfggames * cganzvielezahlen * ch4s3 * chaosteo_ * ChaoticAvacado * charmanerd * chattatv * cheetahboy3000 * ChelzBZD * cherrilive * chibimiharu * chibiramen * chiblet_thief * chierri * chitaum * chloraform * chocolatethundertv * choneyman * chorzo * christheredbeard * chromedome_tv * ChubbsBots * chun_rhee * Chunadian * cinder_ash * circusan1mal * cl2en1 * clawshi * cloudi_tv * cloudookami * cmalxhisoka * cmdtshepard_ * coach_nathaniel * cobrao1 * colimann * colmity * comfey * computerchick * conan_live * connoreatspants * corrosivebullet * cosmelk * costadinov * Coughberg * cpt_hook23 * cptfusselboesewicht * crawlersxgrave * creepsters * crimsoncloudxist * crzcow * csleeper * Cursesu * cutie_shiny * cy9n * cyber_ex * cypherag * da_lolinger * daantheman * daddysteve * dadohay * daemoniumhd * daffodizzy * daftdragon * dagurrOfficial * daisuki1990 * damnjacquie * dancm * Dank840 * dannykobe3 * dapperdarius * darajh * daramk * dark2naruto * DarkBlueCow * darkocesare * darkslayer669 * darlnlala * dascrazybunny * dashxmagnum * datavase * daviscd * DazPlay1337 * dbfig * dc1gg * Dcjuggernaut * dckles_squirrel * deadachek * deadpool175 * deadpoolxweapon * deadxh * deckie * deefayy * deloria * demonaura * dendak19 * denidefdef_vr * denisphantom * denizlov * der_yugo * desire376 * determinedsloth * deVdfeenix * dexva * diego0212yt * digitaleratwitch * digitalwelt_original * digivee * discharg * disillusiontv * ditschtv * dj_free * DJClicheDarkness * djgonzo_05 * Djmm01 * djskdms * djsoboro * dngi * dobbytheblkelf * doc2812 * Dodg3rr * dojoseven * doktorreed * domino_scarlett * donarkie * DonSavage_ * dontsweattt * doodledrifter * doomsd4ys * dopepopefps * douguras * draqonette * drewmega * dring0369 * drkursic * drmedikit * DuckyDaDragonTamer * duhfishygod * dunb4gaming * e_mazing_experience * earthtoraymond * eather123 * ebenyme * einfach_nivan * einyokai * elabuelokraken * electroniclogic * eltacoboii * emasu * emilypink * emperor_zk * enfrchy * epell1 * eradikatex * eric2472005 * ericbangi * EROOBIN * esarc * estefanyop * estroth72 * etechman100 * eujuuno * evert0nchaves * eviltaiga * evozakira * ewolfblue * exlasdesign * exoticpenguin_420 * ezak931 * ezbreezylive * fabuggy * faderjockey1 * fail_mast3r * fatwabbitx * faust4712 * fayttt * FEAR_EPIDEMIC * fearsometurtle * featherinne * felixsoum * femetalalkemist * feuermoke * filamsj * filipim * findus * FinReally * firepolice69 * firstoni * fizziberry * fkflaviuskings * fkoalla * flakegriffn * flavouredblazed * fleeury * flipernoob * floxiiik * Fluffy_Kiwi101 * flurbee * flyamzim * focusjosh10 * fooli * Foolishbloodhunter * fooyung_ * forcexds * forgottenkingrade * fracer1 * freshprince_910 * frispen * froobish * frostND * frostyfrog * frz_yellow * furk80 * g4ntz3rtv * gabidesu * GaiaLancer * gameevida * gamehero * gameknights * gamenadian * gamer_insano * gamesonee * gamingemblem * gardoth64 * gaurav2567 * gavilion * gels * generationgabe * genjig * gensoncm * GentlemanMaj * ggankdt * ghostlywight * GibinatorGaming * gillbawk * girlgunner7 * GlitchinHard * gmsth * gohan200009 * goldenstroketv * golemplay * gonqueoficial * goodcharles * gravefire * grayboy98 * greyscalez * grietalatinatv * grinsgames * GrubbyLoot * gryphthingy * gspa * gulume2611 * gunsmith_cat * gyoor_ * hanguk_sama * hanle121 * haru_tachibana * hatlebee * hautaiin * havokzthename * hawkward_trent * hazedbunni * hdgamingghostlp_live * hdh2082221 * Heartlessorbit * hecktik1 * heethartheterrible * hellveingaming * hends * henrysantz * henrysneaky * herodantv * heroplayer19 * hessentovape * HettyPatel * hevgirl * heyimfoxie * heyitsmebuddha * hi_im_rav * hi_swan * hikaron_ * hilderzera * hiltzy * hinamori * hipdrew * HiTWOMAN69 * HokageLo * HomerAladdin * honyakusha * horuzi * hotohori_z * humanascension * hunnam6657 * huntertehgamer * hupsaiya * HusbandoGoddess * husky777 * hydrafx * i_r_chibikawaii * i_switchz * iamjonnylaw * icemaker32 * ickyy * icysuccess * idragonslayer818 * idreamofskyy * ifritking * iHateFLAWLESS * ihzzay * illerona * illicit_nights * ilmariexplorer * ilyavalentine * im_kywolfie * im_topp3r * ImDidja * imrumi * imsquishyy * imthenaysayer * ImTofuuu * incrediblemae * indeedee * infinatehope * infinity_biscuit * InitiaNova * instantsmile * instatune * invertid0 * irishay * iseepur3ice * istriker95i * itsmeapollog * itsmeshiggy * itssongrider * itsthegio * itstheugglife * itzallphaa * itzmac14 * itzzkrispy * ixKyuubii * iyokuu * izzy1775 * j_c_x_ * j0rt * jaanpu * jaipastrouvedepseudos * jairoglyphics_ * JamesReign * japanfm * japonawa * jardagonex * jasbran * jastikamoon * javel4life * javii510 * jayflyt * jayfromsandiego * jayjp * jazzyfreetv * jdernz * jeanpat * jeffreypesos * jellyd0ts * jennjennlive * jessedstreams * jetlifepilot * jeylaaa * jfoxyj * jgriff100 * jhoonroose * jjh0308 * jjjonesjr33 * jjongs2001 * jocksandwich * joefreshest * jogiejoey * johnnyrockoff * johnportillo * johnsonem1900 * jomojg * josephjoestar316 * josh_and_egg_roll * josh_the_choke * joshkupka * JourneyMTL * jpblink * jprprice * jrpg_zachary * jtl1e * juanchopr * juanrtech * juis * Just_Baki * JustinoKouhai * justnobodyhere * k31k * kaavale * KaelShisho * kagijpn * kainico * kalito66 * kaluripoeg * kanachou * kanyetwittee * karateromi * katenzor * kattstrike * kayoto_play * kazper * kbkingsize * kd2367 * KeannieReeves * kedrihan_ * keithdapperkombo * kelvinouteiro * kelvinwan * kerucchis * kevbotbeepboop * kevinmcolon * khaosgg * khayautik * kiddo146 * kiddreftv * Kielix * kikaedark * killacalikenny * killadelphia * killadisme * killglance * killshotkitty * kindheartedfriend * king_weeb * kingdanteal * kingkorial09 * Kingpin6100 * kingwashii * KingzVizion * kite_tales * kitsunegamereviews * kitsuragi * kitty_sinn * kitzelmich * kiwiliciouz * Kjackice * klassykylie * klaydn * knightrider956 * knubonic * koka95 * kooblikon * kotonesoul * kraoki * kratoscheky * kraziikilla * kriticalhitslive * kronetm * kryptic_ninja_ * krystal_Oborin * kudss * kurojin * kuvirus * Kyuriosity * lachri * ladycamisama * ladykahrlie * ladykaylee * lameduckg * lancextreme * Lastingmadness * lasukma * lavidiki * lay_xe * lazztheman * ldiamondie * leapered69 * LEGENDVRY * legit_karnage * lemecaigri * leobeavs * leolins10 * letsklay * LevelOneUp * lewdylife * lghtnchasercws * liamnask * liberopr10 * lilbeannn * lilincat * lilvac * linkerz * lisajj_619 * lite_umbreon * literallyxsatan * littlecolt * littlemousevr * littleredlupa * lmdylan * lmsolo * locdupprod * loffter2 * lolinia * lolsmcfee * looping_wild_show_and_co * lord_skinner * lordac91 * lordlug * loudesporttv * lovelysweets * lovlyjade * lozernewb * lps_sycknation * lucidlzs * luckygvatv * Luckythevulpix * lucy_first * luigibros * lukeiswell * lukinhasdabig1 * lukpim * lumight * lunagore * lunattik15 * lunick * Lutzalec * lyndwurm * lyshamauricex3 * lz_phantomblade * mabasei * macaveli7113 * madvgmon * madysenpai * magnytewd * majestic_era * majinstephanie * majojolive * majorstinson * malrin_kr * manicslostcause * mansgamess * mapeli * maple_baddger * marcandre2894 * marcellusmenezes * mareeziscool * maria_kat * mariopertile * markanthonyaf * markeydeee * markhusd20 * marlinxmao * maroddity * martinhello * martyshack * maskedswan * master_of_chaos * masterpink_ * mastersamii * matlechat * mattalbum_ * mattbytheway * maveric408 * maverick8308 * max_einfallslos * maxou556 * mayrim_ * MDee14 * megilino * mekkanixx * melteoc * memorystack * meowko * meraktv * metalicat206 * metatropes * metrokenshin * mezzafgc * midogeek * mikeogame * mikkimarvel * miniblaze * mirageiw * mirronsenpai * miss_bm * miss_chezza * missdjm * misssnore * mistrbluesky * mitchdoosh * mkultrakill * mkyorim * mmkprospects * modtv1337 * mogeniord * monkeynico * montug * moodshrono * moodystreams * moonbutterfly * moonlight8 * Moontype * most2k * mostcreativename3 * motaxuni * mothxwings * motokogames * mouthywench * Mr__G35 * mr_sw33ts_419 * mrbuffgaming * mrdeathxc69 * mrkrypticvirus * mrkslu * mrwaffleszzzz * MrYettah * ms_gaming16 * msbamba * MsDirtyBird98 * msemvp * msmewmew * msrag3r * mstjones87 * mtg_lexicon * musashii974 * MusicOffbeatTV * mustachenerd * mw_king * mwpxnightsky * mysticalgamer79 * mysticblaster * MysticLeeeroy * mysticmousegaming * mzfrostbite * nacholibre94 * nadedaxx8 * nanaroman * nancyvandal * nanmeira * naraxas866 * naru_sensei * narujen * natoegamer * nattadash * nazastainor * ndpokhd * nebelfuss * nekochxan * nekusasuneko * nepnuts * nerdmitherz * nerdralls * neurofourier * nezodam * ngt_mystery * nguyennguyen * nightlyght * nightmare6620 * ninamiru * ninetailshin * ninjastep13 * ninjatoine * njaa * Njagos * noblegamingpr * noctblooo * noerukoneko * noixgames * noobjawon * nordous_ * nortron_ * notduck * nothingbutgamez * notryant * nova_lmg * noy203 * nsajose * nukehands * nurse_leira * nwandy_ * nyanyarebellion * nysttren * oafkad * odysseywow * offdutyninja * officialkyanto * og1narz * ogmegbeast * ohheyybree * ohnonotagain * ojjjuj * oldtimer_kyoshii * onepunchromi * onjiary * onoderian * oogler1 * oohmz * oolongdong * opdelusion * orlexor * oshstreams * Osscarr * ostrichcrap * otaku_prince1 * otakugaming_yt * ouluh * overkill2016 * p1_Gamer * paijemonstre * pandalotgaming * pandasmasherx * pandeezblack * panpoleon * papadarius * papastephane * pappamullins * paranoidmelon * parfays2 * PastorJebediah * patbaer * pato_galstark * patosh * patschi23 * paulwerkema * PCLife * peacee * pedrogas * pelityy * perfy * peterchozen1 * peticoff * petster12 * phantom_blad3 * phantomthagod * phenomemtv * phosphosu * phtevenjohnsonxx * piadasemgrraca * picketfencekaratechop * pinkpanda_elle * pinoychan * pintarider * pixel_yuu * pixiedusty43 * pl3xtv * planktontv * playmoo666 * plobh * pocketpenny * poisoncurls * pokemanicx * pokgiandmh * polt3rgeiist * potatoe_monkey * potatotaytay * potterplayz19 * powerslight * preheet * prettypoison105 * prince0fsayians * prinny84 * prinnyshow * Prismalin * project_near * projectronin * projectt__ * properplay13 * Proutnies * psyberius_1 * PuffnPlayTV * PunchAHPack * punksmiles * puphachi * purrsephonekitten * pvradigmshift * qcklassiktv * qentizy * qgzero * qsie * quackclube * qualnkvala * quandonestgeek * quqco * ra_skippyd * rafaelrods * rager_rager * ragingnoodle94 * rainbowchi * rainekun * rainywolves * Rakkotsunami * Randm_Hero_ * ranmyakujouten * rarikii * RaveNecro * rawstarr * rawswagga * rax_tv * rayapollo * raydensinn * raythesamurai * realjayden * realwezzy * reaper_r0se * rebral * reconisawesome * reddsonn * redj350z * redline2022 * rednurd * refernocarnage * relevant007 * remenai * reoatokey * requipstar * retro_madness * retrowolfe * REVERSIHIDE * rexmuffin666 * rgs_kingsane * ricarfoxxxx * rick_gomes01 * ricky_spanish21 * rickybbe * rilkar_tv * ringoplay * rishiswaz * rithloky * rivers_008 * rizzletv * rockarchyTV * rograrocks * roistuper * rokouz * rolf_666 * romeo_lestath * ronaldinhodolol * ronit * rosestream * rperez9832 * rpgmookie * RsdAngelonfire * rtvswagger * ruinedcombat * rundenirun * Runitblacktk * rusel2 * RuSyxx * rutzo * ryakishou * ryanamercy * Ryanlemos4 * rynchan * saemi_says * sagecast * saifoxyl * saikoyg * sailepro * sailorplasma * sakuraleilani * saltny * saltynebby * samgamebox * samoanj_ * santyemaya * sarah_loopz * sarapyon1228 * sarko * savageblack_ * savvysilky * saydaqui * sayneeee * Sayon_Osu * sayuriin * schrodingerj17 * scotch_mist * scottylazer * scruffy_man * seiyoshin * sekutsuu * SenranRose * senseisam * serobaki * serpentpower * Sh1nySho3s * shaddowki * shaderose127 * shadow_doyler * shadow_gam1ng * shadowblasta * shadowkurama * shadowroninn * shaeman111 * sharkization * shawnnortonart * shazamd24 * shenbrood * shinigami420 * shinji_ * shinlives * shiyriu_amigo * shoteitv * shoux11 * showtimedr * shredmir * SillyandStrange * simon923 * simply_cj * simplyje2ns * sinagast * sinxrealize * siraussieman * sixxtysixx * skibskeet * skit3l * sky7934 * skylisette * skypanda2 * skyterrane21 * Slake_GER * sleepingwithpandas * slip_shock * sliverr2012 * slpdirewolf * sly30 * SlyFoxC * smasharina * smith0123 * smollandkoala * sneedgaming * snowbodyhere * soapdodger_ * soda4sama * solid_snake1982 * solomitte * somethingvuong * sonicplaystv * sono_kidd * sonofguns_ * soochubsta * sorafr_ * soraoblivian * souchi * soujiro89 * Soulhealer95 * southtownpro * Sparkywrecks * spartanviper201 * speedknight * spider22monkey * spiderbandit * Spike306_tv * spinwhiz * spoileritsucs * spotrise * squattinggamer * squeamish_cactus * squiishymoon * ssozung * stane4m * star_x_ta * starglowy * starkstriderv2 * startingfrom0 * stealth1192 * stealthydirgaming * steampunkgears * steampunkphoenix * steelewolf * stephkatara * stevedel * stevenlei * stickmanrules5 * stolas_nova * straightouttatokyo * stranger26 * streamaq * streambutterfly * stxtw * stylezx_ * sugarbubblesgaming * sugoisamurai * suicidestarr * supergamegeek * supergamer2011 * Superhappyandgaming * susinagi * sweetmayushii * sweetteapaul * symphoniaTV * t0mcatg * t4yn * t8tumz * tacoyakigaming * tattoomann * taug323 * taw_pain * tawilliams_12 * taydarling * tayz_ssjg * teamdoubled * teamrico * teawithmandy * teekthegamer * tefabeba * tehbadcanadian * Templar224 * tenente_rojo_ * tenshisusanoo * tercla * terrian_jones12 * tevinbarksdale * texg4real * tgykofficial * th3_crane * Th3DyslexicBear * Thatkawaiiguy_ * thatkennyguygames * Thazuya * the_arena * the_novacore * the_over_pro_gamer * the_pengwin * the_skarm_ * theangryginger * theanimepandatwitch * theawkwardgamers * thebeardsage * thebigdadshow * thecataclysm_ * thecoplacetogo * thedecalcaptain * TheEpiicHuman * thefactions * thefamous * thefrogisdead * thegamergirls3 * thegaminginfluence * thegoldenfighter * theinoobproject * theinsanity * thejoyqc * thekidcage * themartonfi1228 * themeowz143 * thenavidude * thepeachcobbler_ * ThePeoplesPineapple * thereal_shogun * therealhilf * theretrogamerroom * thesamd * thetokezen * theweekendgamerjnutt12 * theweenyboyz * theyoungmoneysniper * thggames1 * thiagosannches * thickfillet * Thiefexe * thisisjorgo * thomquist * thor_man * tier1waifu * TiltedTrojan * timmytotems * tluv_ * toastttmalone * toastydawgz * tobi_stalker * toby2k * toffifel * tohka_aryani * tommuah * Tommythedwarfz * toxa_blackrock * transformersblackops * transientx * trevoni * tridern1335 * trintek_ * triplechintyler * troyfu7 * truepine * truevoltage * trystocks * tsukimara * tsukimeplays * ttvquk1ll3r * tuckertv * tuglow * turos_kensei * tv_modern * tw_arizonablack * twilitfall * twinsfireandice * twistersanches * twitchstormtv * txrich1 * tyzillion * uffebror * ultrarice * underwordking112 * UnevenPictures * unicorlol * uninterruptibleminds * unstoppablolive * uvsane * v0ltekze * vampireking * vapame * varial_reality * vasto7 * vattgh3rn * veloxusgaming * venum_tv_ * vieo * viinicky * vikingduckie * vinsonte * VintageGamerChic * viralrespawn * vixierose * vixle90 * vllthia * vulpeslive * wa_ll_e * WafticLIVE * walead_ * walleshow * wave_asakura * wavvy__x * waynesworldx3 * wazerbrazer * weeknighthero * weiward * WekizZ * wesnasty * whiiteemilk * whoolagan * whosjimianyway * wilddreamz * wilkszera * williefresco * winged_gear * wingman700 * winitallesports * wistawii * wolfborgg * wolfkiira * wrongo * wyanoqueen * wysocereal * xanohana * xbennjii * xcupcakemonsterx * xcurryfuryx * xdionyz * xeriail * xerxi_ * xFEARxFr0st * xiiisu * xingkazma * xjbunni * xjerryplays * xjonesylove * xKINGCITYx * xkoazuko * xmoonragex * xnakx * xresurr3ctedx * xsilver_devil * xxInvaderZim182x * xxl_otaku * xyamuchax * xyzmrsrampagezyx * xzelfie * yaboytwiz * yagyu88 * yankdawg24 * ycaverna * yellzworld * ymontv * yogithemaster * yokaiartist * yokaiplayz * yoker_nivek * yonkukaido * yooniebunnie * young_gucci_56 * youngvayu * youxisilverkin * yuikaichan * yyzzil * yzxlf * zabracus * zaddrs * zakac * zarkercompany * zboywonder * zeddiccus_ * zefiixtv * zepyrah * zertox80 * zickgametv * zidane_ * ziinichen * zocker_aka_maffay * ZoeBotNA * zombiebuttnugget * ztbgaming * zyrf1

The Crunchyroll Anime Awards are only on Twitch was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Twitch Developer team is coming to meet our community of developers and builders across the world this year!

We will kick off the tour in Tel Aviv this April and join the rest of the Twitch community in Berlin during TwitchCon Europe. Then we head to Paris and London — with more cities around the globe being announced soon.

Come learn about why working with Twitch and Twitch technologies like Extensions, Drops, and Twitch Prime make sense for your game, and see how building streamer tools help engage the streamer and viewer communities on Twitch. These technologies are a fundamental part of engaging the Twitch community and creating unique interactive experiences.

You can also meet with the TwitchDev team, share your ideas, give feedback on the product roadmap, and connect with your local Twitch Developer community.

In each city, you will also have the opportunity to hear from special guests and local partners who will dive into what Twitch brings to the table for the entire community.

Spots are limited — secure yours now.

Upcoming Events

Click to learn more and reserve your ticket today.

8 April: Tel Aviv

12 April: Berlin

15 April: Paris

17 April: London

More cities around the globe will be announced soon, so check here for updates!

Announcing the 2019 Twitch Developer Tour was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Roses, chocolates, and um, battle royales? Yes, Valentine’s Day is almost here and we’re spreading the love all over Twitch.

Join us on February 14th as we highlight streamers on the Twitch front page who have found love on Twitch or helped others do the same. I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Here’s the full Valentine’s schedule:

Awkwards_Travel 5–7am PT

Follow along with Tallulah and Gaspard as they take you with them across the world for a look into the lives of full-time travelers. Always surrounded by a good time, you definitely don’t want to miss the lovely shenanigans these two get into.

ortoPilot 11 am-2 pm PT

Having helped two of his viewers with a proposal during a stream, we could consider Ortopilot our own Twitch cupid. With his trademark sultry voice, he’s here to bring in Valentine’s Day the only way he knows how, by singing. Stop by and experience the musical experience that is Ortopilot.

Geoff 2–4 pm PT

Proposing in a game of Super Monkey Ball 2 isn’t easy, but Geoff managed to pull it off and bring us to tears as MissKaddyKins was taken surprise by his proposal. Come check out the lovely couple as they show the world what kind of love they have to give.

Kickole 6–8 pm PT

Love comes in all forms and Kickole fell in love all over again when her partner proposed in the cutest way possible, with video games! Come watch this lovely duo show you what true love looks like on Twitch.

BizSnes 8–10 pm PT

Being turned into a living video game console can be pretty rough, but with someone by your side it’s a whole lot better. BizSnes showed us what love really is with his beautiful proposal and he’s here to show you that despite his plastic exterior, there really is a heart of gold inside.

JOEYKAOTYK 10 pm — 2 am PT

Traveling the world can be quite the adventure, but with JOEYKAOTYK’s travel streams you’re in for a truly special treat. After proposing to his girlfriend live to his audience, the two have been happy seeing the world together and taking you all along for the ride.

It’s all love on Twitch this Valentine’s Day was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The wait is over. It’s finally time to begin the 2019 Overwatch League season! Day 1 kicks off today at 4PM PST with a rematch of last year’s Grand Finals: the Philadelphia Fusion and London Spitfire, and it’s all going down on the /overwatchleague channel. Catch the action with a limited free trial of the newly updated Command Center.

Command Center is the best part of this year’s Overwatch League All-Access Pass — a feature The Verge called “a robust new spectating tool that should make matches much easier to understand.” Watch your way from the first-person perspective of any pro player, or from the POV of your favorite roles, or from a slew of viewing combinations. You can start your free trial of Command Center, lasting two full match days, directly from the Overwatch League channel.

2019 Passholders also get additional benefits, including 200 Overwatch League tokens, ad-free viewing, team-themed emotes, and more. The cheering has already begun in chat, so get yours now and start participating in solo and community challenges to unlock emotes, badges, and more.

Stage 1 — Week 1 matches are happening every day from Feb 14–17. Join us at /overwatchleague and we’ll see you in chat.

Start the 2019 Overwatch League season with your free Command Center trial was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Speedrunning is nothing new to the Twitch community; in fact, it’s a formula that complements the Twitch platform perfectly. If you’re not familiar with speedrunning, it’s where skilled gamers smash through levels in a battle against the clock while viewers get to watch the best-of-the-best gamers flex their chops. It’s a win-win for all involved.

Recently, with the help of an Extension built by Warp World, speedrunning has evolved. Some of the most successful Extensions take the viewing experience from somewhat passive to a new level of dynamic by enabling viewers to join in on the action — and that’s exactly what the Crowd Control Extension does for speedrunning.

When streamers have the Crowd Control Extension enabled, viewers can literally help (or hinder!) the game by dropping in a range of in-game items. For example, while playing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, viewers can gift armor, a heart, or Blue Potion refill to assist Link in a time of need.

“The way we see it, audience interactivity is the future of speedrunning and game streaming, so we’re making sure that Crowd Control enables streamers to interact with and connect with their audiences in never-been-done ways,” says Matt (Jaku) Jakubowski, CEO of Warp World.

This might feel risky — to trust that the viewers’ actions will enhance the game versus derail it, so to keep the flow of incoming items manageable and fun for the streamer, viewers exchange Twitch Bits for Crowd Control Coins in order to unlock the different in-game effects. Items which carry a stronger effect on the game require more Coins, which effectively limits over usage.

The Extension adds a “new dimension” to the interaction between the streamers and their audience as well as to the games themselves. When the streamer is using Crowd Control they are no longer just playing the game, but rather playing alongside their community.

The Crowd Control Extension is integrated with a handful of retro speedrunning favorites, including Super Mario World and Zelda: A Link to the Past, but the Warp World team is working hard to get more games and platforms supported, both retro and modern titles.

In fact, today Jaku and team are announcing support for Pokemon Red & Blue in conjunction with a 3-day charity event for Direct Relief, a non-profit organization with a mission to improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty or emergencies. The Pokethon stream will be the first to showcase the Pokemon integration and Warp World will donate their 20% developer share of Bits received to Direct Relief. The GA release for Crowd Control Pokemon support will come immediately after their run.

Origin of Warp World

In October 2015, Jaku, CEO of Warp World, was streaming Super Mario Maker, a Mario spin-off which allows players to create and play their own custom Super Mario courses, share them online as well as download and play courses designed by other players, and realized there was not an easy and/or practical way to accept viewer levels via Chat. All “solutions” required users to go to another website, which may or may not have verification that the level they submitted was actually valid.

In turn, Jaku decided to create his own solution, Warp World, a service for streamers to accept Super Mario Maker-level requests from viewers in their Chat. It was geared toward solving multiple problems, but the primary goal was to provide a solution that was easy for both the streamer and viewer alike. It was quickly adopted and embraced by the Super Mario Maker community. It became an essential tool for the Super Mario Maker streamer community and that community is where Jaku recruited many early Warp World staff members like GrandPooBear, xwater and Chudbreeder.

As Jaku’s streaming community grew so did Warp World, but Jaku quickly realized that Warp World needed to expand outside of Super Mario Maker. So the development company started building other tools and services for streamers. At its core, Warp World is a company of streamers and developers. They use their knowledge and insights to bring unique tools and experiences to the Twitch community that you won’t find anywhere else.

Crowd Control IRL

As Crowd Control neared release, Jaku and team decided they wanted to showcase their closed Beta at an event, since at its core, the Extension was made for the crowd. They partnered with recognized Twitch streamers from the Randomizer, Retro and Speedrunning communities to showcase Crowd Control to their communities and viewers. It had an awesome reception, and it kept people hyped for the Open Beta.

Next, they hosted a “Live! from TwitchCon: Crowd Control Showcase” campaign with streamers at Warp World’s TwitchCon booth. Streamers were invited to demo a game on stream with the Extension active and people live at TwitchCon could interact with the game from the booth as well as the viewers who were watching back home.

That same weekend Crowd Control was featured at Mario Master’s Colosseum, a three-day marathon that raised over $100K for Direct Relief.

The Crowd Control Race Feature is still in the works, but they’ve already teamed up with communities like speed gaming and Super Mario World to showcase the feature on crowdfunding events.

“We’ve seen a huge amount of positive responses from viewers and streamers alike. The amount of game ideas, effect ideas, and overall feedback we have been given by users have been tremendous,” Jaku says.

To add icing on the cake, streamers have seen a significant increase in Twitch Bits used on their channel when the Extension is active. Warp World reported that in October 2017, the month they launched, over a million Bits passed through the Crowd Control Extension. This is core to the ongoing growth and momentum the Warp World is riding.

What’s Next?

The Warp World team is heads down focused on adding more games and new features to the Extension, having just shipped mobile compatibility which was a highly requested feature from launch. They are also actively in talks with certain members of game communities to help get more games supported as soon as possible. They have some big plans for some future Extensions on Twitch, because as Jaku says,

“We see them [Extensions] being a crucial part to the growth of the platform and our company in 2019. Our primary goal for this year is to work with new and interested developers to bring additional unique, Twitch game experiences and also see those games with a ‘Supports Crowd Control’ as a listed feature.”

Want to learn more about Crowd Control and Warp World?
Visit them at https://warp.world/ or @TeamWarpWorld on Twitter.

Get inspired. Get the audience more involved. And start making your own Extensions today!

The Evolution of Speedrunning: Crowd Control was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Looking for loot? You’ve come to the right place. Here’s a taste of what Twitch Prime members will be receiving just for being members throughout February.

Apex Legends

Heard about the next evolution in battle royale, Apex Legends? Well, we have a surprise for you! Starting today, Twitch Prime members will have access to an EXCLUSIVE Pathfinder skin and 5 Apex Packs!

Get started linking your accounts here.

MapleStory 2

For the first time, get exclusive bonus loot in MapleStory 2 with Twitch Prime!

Coming soon, link your Nexon and Twitch Prime accounts to claim some exclusive items in MapleStory 2, including a Flying Fan flying mount, White Rabbit outfit, Tamed Lil Boogie ground mount, and seven days of MapleStory 2 Premium Club!

Vainglory

Coming soon, Twitch Prime members will be able to unlock 6 heroes & 2 emojis to celebrate Vainglory cross-platform launch!

Keep an eye out for other loot coming soon in League of Legends, Neverwinter, The Grand Tour Game and more!

Be sure to follow us on Twitter @TwitchPrime to stay updated on all the in-game loot available to Twitch Prime members and where you can find your favorite streamers checking it out.

And if you missed our recent releases, don’t forget to check out the other exciting offers we have available to Twitch Prime members:

NBA 2K19

For a limited time in NBA 2K19, Twitch Prime members can up their game with 25,000 Virtual Currency and 5 MyTEAM Packs!

Neverwinter Mottled Rage Drake Bundle

Get the Neverwinter Mottled Rage Drake Bundle starting today with your Twitch Prime membership! Bundle includes:

• Mottled Rage Drake Mount
• 30 days in-game VIP
• 3x Epic Insignia Choice Pack
• Rank 13 Enchantment Choice Pack

RuneScape

Twitch Prime members can get a free 14-day RuneScape and Old School RuneScape membership along with exclusive loot:

• Exclusive Amara Outfit
• Exclusive Chinchompa Plushie
• 2 Umbral Chests (guaranteed super-rare prizes)
• 15 Treasure Hunter Keys
• 40 Hearts of Ice
• 200 RuneCoins

FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Starter Edition

Get the PC version of the FINAL FANTASY® XIV Online Starter Edition free with your Twitch Prime membership until May 3 and begin your journey as the Warrior of Light!

Warframe

Twitch Prime members can get Trinity Prime, Vectis Prime, Fang Prime, an exclusive Prime Sugatra, and the exclusive Spektaka Prime Syandana for free!

Free Games with Prime

March into February with this month’s Free Games with Prime

We’re two months into the new year and that means more Free Games with Prime. In February, Twitch Prime members can claim and play these games:

· The Flame in the Flood
A rogue-like river journey through the backwaters of a forgotten post-societal America. Forage, craft, evade predators. From the mind of the Art Director of BioShock and a team of game industry veterans from BioShock, Halo, Guitar Hero, and The Rock Band series comes The Flame in the Flood.

· Dear, Esther
Dear Esther immerses you in a stunningly realized world, a remote and desolate island somewhere in the outer Hebrides. As you step forwards, a voice begins to read fragments of a letter: ‘Dear Esther…’ — and so begins a journey through one of the most original first-person games of recent years.

· Downwell
Downwell is a curious game about a young person venturing down a well in search of untold treasures with only his Gunboots to protect him.

· Draknek & Co Puzzle Collection
Includes 3 challenging puzzle games: Sokobond, A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, and Cosmic Express.

• Sokobond is an elegantly designed puzzle game about chemistry.
• A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build is an adorable puzzle game about being a monster and making snowmen.
• Cosmic Express is a puzzle game about planning the train route for the world’s most awkward space colony.

Once you claim a game, they’re yours to keep forever!

What is Twitch Prime?

Twitch Prime is a premium experience on Twitch that is included with Amazon Prime. Benefits include monthly games and in-game loot, a Twitch channel subscription every 30 days AND all the benefits of Amazon Prime. See all current Twitch Prime offers here.

Check out the full list of Amazon Prime benefits in: US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Italy and Spain. You can try it for free for 30 days right here, and when you do, you get all the Twitch Prime benefits instantly just by linking your Twitch account to your Amazon account.

Coming to Twitch Prime in February! was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Coming right off the best TwitchCon ever in San Jose, we knew it would take something big to make this year’s event ever better. So we went straight to our most powerful and trusted source of information: all of you.

Every year, we survey thousands of TwitchCon attendees about what you liked and what we could work on for next time. And as it turns out, Twitch really loved San Diego, so we’re going back for round two. On September 27–29, join us in the San Diego Convention Center for a TwitchCon 2019 that’ll make TwitchCon 2016 look like an opening act.

San Diego, CA is the perfect city to cover in purple. The convention center is located in San Diego’s beautiful Marina district, and right next to the Gaslamp Quarter — a lively neighborhood with affordable hotels and great food. Did we mention incredible weather? Plus, the Anchorman jokes are just too easy, even if that movie is now 15 years old… :NotLikeThis:

We’re bringing all the good stuff you love about Twitch to life over one unforgettable weekend. You can meet and hang out with with your favorite streamers from chat. You can bond over esports, board games, or new games to play. You can learn how to start streaming or demo new features to try on your own channel. The whole community is invited, and we’d love for you to join us.

If you can’t make it to California, no worries, we’re still streaming the keynote, panels, and much more on Twitch. And there’s plenty of room for everyone in chat.

As we get closer to September, we’ll have plenty to share about the Call for Content, confirmed speakers and activities, ticket sales, and more The best ways to stay informed are to sign up for our newsletter on twitchcon.com and to follow us @TwitchCon on Twitter. If you already know you’re down to attend, we’ve also secured some early deals on hotels that you can book right now. Stay tuned for more soon!

Announcing TwitchCon 2019 was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nothing makes us happier than seeing your Chat flooded with custom emotes for your community. In fact, we love it so much, we’re making it even easier to unlock them.

Starting today, we’re adding more emote slots to help Affiliates and Partners provide even more benefits to your community and subscribers, and help express what’s unique about your community by nurturing a shared language.

Here’s what’s changing:

AFFILIATE EMOTE UPDATE

We launched the Affiliate program with one emote slot for each subscription tier and we’ve heard consistently that you wanted more emotes. So we’re doing something about it.

Beginning today and rolling out over the next four months, Affiliates can unlock up to five Tier 1 emotes, with one additional emote each for Tier 2 (up to six total) and Tier 3 (up to seven total) subscribers.

You can unlock these additional emote slots by reaching different Subscriber point thresholds. If your Subscriber Point total has decreased over time, fear not. We will calculate your available emote slots by using your maximum Subscriber Point total.

When you meet the threshold over the next few months, we will review new emotes as you submit them.

Stay tuned to @TwitchSupport for exact rollout times for the additional emote slots in March, April, and May.

PARTNER EMOTE UPDATE

We’re also helping Partners provide even more benefits as your communities grow.

Previously, Partners were granted two Tier 1 emotes when they achieved Partner status. Beginning today, we are increasing that number from two to six. That means Partners with 0–64 Subscriber Points will automatically unlock six emote slots. Emote thresholds for 65+ Subscriber Points are unchanged.

We can’t wait to see all those new emotes flood your chat! For more information, check out the Subscriber Emoticon Guide for Partners and Affiliates.

Partner and Affiliate Emote Update was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Meet PogDroid, our beloved Android app, to watch the latest memes unfold live while on the go. PogDroid started with very humble beginnings, and has seen incredible growth in the past couple of years. We quadrupled the team, redesigned the entire app, and rewrote most of it in only a few months using the latest and greatest Android has to offer.

Buckle up: this is PogDroid’s epic adventure.

Level 1: Meme app with big dreams

Back in March 2017, PogDroid was maintained by a very small team of engineers, and covered the most basic functionality of Twitch: browse and watch a stream with Chat.

Mobile, and Android in particular, was getting more and more users, and the company decided it was time for a serious investment in PogDroid. The plan was to give the app a fresh new look, and build up some important features that were missing. The team grew only a little bit, but were tasked to take on this big project.

As with most apps maintained by a very small team, the code structure was a mess. It became clear that such a big redesign compounded with adding new features could not be built cleanly on top of the current foundation. There was no common pattern to build screens, not a single unit test, and a lot of core classes were more than 3,000 lines of code long, with very complex state management, handling everything from network requests to UI rendering.

We all agreed that in order to make PogDroid what we were dreaming of, we first needed to rethink its foundations.

Step 1: Agree on a common architecture pattern

The first thing we did is come up with a common design pattern to build features and screens. We wanted this design pattern to be:

• easy to understand
• hard to get wrong
• flexible enough to be applied to any feature or screen
• easy to unit test

We quickly settled on a straightforward MVP pattern that looks like this:

With these layers in mind, it became easy to categorize the type of classes we needed for every feature:

Typical classes living in the Data Layer:

• API
• Repository
• Models

Typical classes living in the Presentation Layer:

• Presenter
• Tracker

Typical classes living in the View layer:

• AdapterBinder (wrapper that manages our RecyclerView adapter)
• ViewDelegate (wrapper that inflates and holds our actual Android views)

With this design pattern and injected dependencies (manually, with static create methods for now), writing unit tests for the data and presentation layer became extremely easy, removing any excuse for not testing your code.

The team quickly adopted the pattern and started rewriting all our main screens in this fashion, adding unit tests in the process! It was also easy to onboard new team members to write consistent code with the rest of codebase.

Having a common pattern that everybody agreed on really accelerated the pace of development of new features and screens, and the team got really good at it. In only three months, we had completed the redesign of the app along with big new features, with around 70 percent of our main screens rewritten from scratch, and about 15 percent unit test code coverage. By this point, the team had tripled, but was still quite small.

Level 2: Stronger, but can do better

With PogDroid’s foundations much stronger and consistent and the big redesign project shipped, we could start focusing on modernizing the codebase.

The first big change that we introduced was adopting Kotlin. The day after it got officially supported by Google in June 2017, we committed our first Kotlin class, and we’ve never looked back since then. The whole team adopted Kotlin in a flash, and today, our whole Android repository is more than 70 percent Kotlin code.

We learned a lot along the way, coming up with our own style guide, some useful extension functions, and of course, getting a few Java interop Null Pointer Exceptions in production. The whole team loves Kotlin and agrees that we all write cleaner, more concise code than we did with Java.

The next big shift in our codebase was the introduction to RxJava. Adoption of RxJava took a bit longer compared to Kotlin, as it requires a slight change of mindset. But with internal team presentations, code examples, helper classes, Kotlin extensions, and a healthy amount of mentoring, we got everyone on the team comfortable with leveraging RxJava.

But just like with Kotlin, the team has now fully adopted it and would never look back. We use it for everything from networking to state management to UI events. Callback hells are a thing of the past and so are memory leaks, thanks to convenient automatic disposing using Kotlin extensions. Unit testing state changes involving background tasks also became easier.

Quickly following the Kotlin introduction to the codebase, one of our team members started to push for dependency injection. We chose Dagger2 as our DI framework of choice, and started working on a separate branch to integrate it. Once we had a clean working example and basic dependencies setup, we had a formal presentation on the library benefits, adoption strategy, and demo. After hearing the benefits, the team voted for a broad adoption of it and we distributed tasks among every team member to “daggerize” their features and screens, and prioritized them by having a full “Dagger Day,” where everybody paused their feature work to get familiar with Dagger and integrate it in parts of the app they were familiar with. This process was very successful, and we now have most of our dependencies managed by Dagger which further accelerated our pace of development.

While we were pretty happy with Retrofit handling our network stack, Twitch services were rapidly migrating to GraphQL in an effort to consolidate all our APIs. At the time, the only available GraphQL library for Android was Apollo, which back then was in a pre-alpha state. We had to make the choice of either writing our own GraphQL client, or take the risk of adopting a very early-stage library for something as critical as our network stack.

After consideration, we chose Apollo despite being so early stage, because it’s open source and the team behind it was easily accessible and responsive through Slack. A few experiments and bug reports later, we went all in on GraphQL and successfully migrated about 90 percent of our API calls. We love how flexible we can be with our queries without needing support from our backend teams to expose mobile-specific APIs.

Another area we wanted to improve on is our automated testing. We have a manual QA team, and they were getting more and more overwhelmed with the amount of new features to test, as well as the usual regression testing. We wanted to make their life easier by automating as much regression testing as possible and incorporate it closer to our development process.

In order to effectively write those integration tests, we leveraged Espresso and Kotlin, writing our own components so that they can be used with a simple and readable DSL.

This greatly helped the team to write their own integration tests for their features, and similarly to the “Dagger Day,” we did a few “UI Test days,” where everybody took the day to focus just on writing UI tests. It was a great opportunity to ramp up those who didn’t have much experience and get the ball rolling on writing more UI tests. We now cover most of the regression test cases with a nightly job that helps us catch issues much earlier than before.

Level 3: We made it here, now what?

Fast forward to 2019, PogDroid is in a good place. We know how to write features cleanly in a consistent way, our tech stack is modern and pleasant to work with, and we have enough tests in place that we feel confident taking on big refactors and code changes. But we’re not stopping there. We still have much to do!

Here’s some of the platform projects we’re currently working on:

• App Bundles: we just changed our build scripts and release process to deploy App Bundles to Google Play instead of APKs, reducing our final APK size by 44 percent!
• Modularization: as we grow the team even more, we want the code boundaries to be clearer than they are now. That means breaking down our app into core and feature modules. This will also help our build times and prepare us to adopt new trends like Dynamic Delivery and Instant Apps.
• A more reactive MVP pattern: now that the team is familiar with RxJava and MVP, we’re taking our pattern one step further by using a state/event propagation approach using Rx. This makes unit testing more resilient to code changes and further reduces the coupling between view delegate and presenter.

We also have some other big mobile platform projects in the pipeline:

• Video and Chat performance monitoring tools and reports
• Automated analytics framework
• Revamped experimentation framework
• Server-driven UI framework

And more! Stay tuned for more blog posts from the mobile team about those topics.

Interested in helping shape the future of PogDroid? We’re hiring in San Francisco and Seattle!

Twitch for Android: From Meme to Dream was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Want to catch up on the latest news and updates, get answers from Twitch Developer experts, just say hi, or make some new friends? Join any or all of our live streams!

New show announcement!

TwitchDev Weekly: Every Thursday at 11am PT

Hang out with the Developer Advocacy team, Matt Auerbach and Jon Bulava, every Thursday at 11am PT to ask your Twitch developer questions! We also use this time for special guests and demonstrating new technical content aimed at helping you get started developing on Twitch faster and easier.

Set a reminder now!

Here’s the latest broadcast:

Monthly Developer Update: Every 3rd Tuesday at 10am PT

Every third Tuesday of the month, we do an hour-long show catching you up on product announcements and updates, upcoming events, community shoutouts, and anything else going on in the Twitch Developer world.

Set a reminder now!

Here’s the latest show:

Wait. Another new show? Yep!

$ npm start twitchdev-aws: Every Wednesday at 10am PT

Twitch Developer Advocacy is partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Technical Evangelism to build a Question & Answer Twitch Extension using AWS services during a multi-episode broadcasting series. The series will contain eight broadcasts and walk you through the process of planning to launching a production Extension. The first episode with air on February 27 at 10am PT from the Twitch Studio in San Francisco!

Set a reminder now!

Guest Streams: Every once in a while…

We even have special guest streams like this one, where Jeff Fritz, Program Manager for Microsoft and prolific live coder on Twitch, discussed live streaming software development best practices.

Check it out now!

While we try to maintain the same schedule, some weeks and months are different, so visit our Events page to see what’s coming up and follow our channel for notifications for when we go live!

New TwitchDev Live Stream Schedule was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Twitch is home to an incredibly diverse set of creators and communities and this March, in honor of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day (March 8), we’re shining the spotlight on some of our favorite women streamers. You’re invited to join the celebration!

Featured Streamers

No matter what kind of stream you’re looking for, from competitive gaming to creative arts, our featured women streamers will be doing what they do best on the front page all month long. Tune in to your favorites, check out a stream for the first time, and definitely stop by on International Women’s Day (March 8) when we’ll be featuring women streamers on the front page all day long. Here’s a full schedule of who we’re featuring and when:

Support 1000 Dreams Fund

For the second year in a row, we’re partnering with 1000 Dreams Fund (1DF) to raise money for women to get involved in STEM and broadcasting. Last year, the community raised $45,000 and helped support 60 women with 1DF’s Twitch BroadcastHER grant. This specific grant is available only to women who are currently a Twitch Affiliate or Partner. If you’d like to help support 1DF this year, you can join the fundraising efforts on Tiltify.

Twitch Rivals is also inviting some of the most talented women of CS:GO to compete for pride, glory, and to raise money for 1DF. And Twitch will match every dollar (up to $25,000) raised during the event, so stay tuned because more details like who is competing and when will be announced soon.

If you have any questions regarding 1000 Dreams Fund or how to sign up to help, you can email charity@twitch.tv to get all your questions answered.

International Women’s Day Guest Speakers

On March 8th, join us for a special edition of Twitch Weekly followed by a special one hour panel hosted by our very own Anna Prosser and featuring Katrina Jones, Twitch’s Head of Diversity & Inclusion and other prominent women in tech and gaming.

Celebrate Women’s History Month on Twitch was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Every day, millions of people come to Twitch to watch and find new channels. To help streamers be more discoverable, and to provide viewers with better recommendations, we’ve been working on tools like tags that help connect people.

We know that people hear about new channels from sources all over the web, which means that sometimes when they arrive the streamer isn’t online or hosting. Starting today, we’re testing new ways to improve the experience viewers have when they stop by a channel and the streamer isn’t live. We want to help introduce new viewers to the channels they find and make channel pages work smarter for streamers.

The first set of tests we’ll be launching are intended to let viewers know that the streamer is offline, provide viewers with information about the channel and types of content they’ll find, and encourage them to view VOD content they might enjoy, like a past broadcast or Highlight.

Our plan is to test and adjust to ensure that we’re making changes that work for every channel on Twitch as we continue to invest in new ways to improve discovery and support streamers in growing their channel.

We hope that these new features aid in streamers’ growth and we look forward to getting everyone’s feedback as we continue to test these ideas. If you have ideas for us, please tell us here.

Improving the Offline Experience for Viewers and Streamers was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re coming back to San Diego once again for TwitchCon 2019. As always, we’ll have tons of games, meet and greets, and other fun things for you to do at the San Diego Convention Center, but once the doors close for the night, you might need some tips to keep the party going.

We’ve recruited Twitch streamers and San Diego experts AnneMunition, Dracontious, GamrEnchantment, Jericho, KuraiNozomi, Samzorz to help share some of the best spots the city has to offer. Here are their recommendations for food, sightseeing, nerdy hangouts, and more to help make your TwitchCon experience the best yet.

Restaurants

AnneMunition

Werewolf: As the self-appointed Burger Queen, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Werewolf and their incredible burgers. I'm dying for a Bourbon Bacon burger with Super Cali Calamari on the side.

Monkey King: Asian fusion with awesome cocktails. Potstickers, dumplings, Korean sliced short ribs... it's all amazing.

Dracontious

Harbor House Restaurant: My personal favorite. I recommend getting some of their crab cakes and maybe a Harbor Mary.

GamrEnchantment

Maryjane's Diner: At the Hard Rock Hotel. A very classy Hard Rock-style diner with great food selections and only a five minute walk from the convention center.

Jericho

Common Stock: They have hot chicken. I don't even need to explain further why you should eat here.

Water Grill: They have some great seafood and can seat bigger parties. You're in San Diego, get some seafood.

KuraiNozomi

Cali Cream: I heard from the owner of this ice cream shop that they will be opening a new downtown location before TwitchCon. There is one about 30 mins up north, and I would often make the drive up there with how good their flavors can be. It is so worth the drive and to have one that close to TwitchCon, I'd recommend everyone go to the one in downtown at least once.

Tajima: A great spot for Ramen, with multiple locations including one in downtown. You can't go wrong.

Samzorz

Burgers, Bait, and Beer: One of the best kept secrets in the downtown area. It’s behind the convention center, just past Joe's Crab Shack. It's an incredible burger/dog spot right on the pier. Can't beat lunch by the water!

Hangout spots

One of the most recommended spots is the Coin-Op Game Room Check out what everyone had to say about it:

It’s the perfect place to have a drink and a bite while playing some arcade games. And it’s only 6 blocks from SDCC. -Annemunition

One of my favorite spots to hang out. It's like Dave and Busters, but in the immediate area. -Dracontious

I highly recommend this spot in the gaslamp as a hangout spot for gamers to grab a drink and game at the same time. For when you're going through withdrawals and missing gaming during TwitchCon, I know we've all been there. - KuraiNozomi

Coin-Op is the coolest retro barcade in the heart of the Gaslamp District. It has the best atmosphere, incredible food/drinks, and that nostalgic feel for the arcades we all grew up loving! -Samzorz

If Coin-Op doesn’t sound like your jam, check out these other bars:

GamrEnchantment

The Tipsy Crow: Nearby in the Gaslamp District. Not only a nice bar with good food, but the upstairs has two billiard tables, a dartboard, and a TV with a Nintendo system for (at the time) Wii Sports activities.

Jericho

Prohibition: 1920’s themed bar that has space for larger groups, and sometimes features live music. Good bar for low-key gatherings.

Tin Roof: Big bar, lots of music, and can definitely fit your party of 15 people.

Photo ops

AnneMunition

Japanese Friendship Garden, Balboa Park: Beautiful garden with bonsai trees, koi ponds, and incredible landscaping.

Sunset Cliffs: Gorgeous seaside cliffs and naturally-formed caves..

Dracontious

Pacific Beach and Mission Beach: Both have amazing boardwalks to enjoy shopping, restaurants, and street performers, as well some arcades and even a roller coaster at Mission Beach and even a surfing simulator at Wavehouse.

KuraiNozomi

Coronado Beach: If you come from a landlocked state, or really anywhere that isn't SoCal, you should definitely hit up the beach as well if you have time. One of my favorites is Coronado beach. Just a short drive over our giant bridge to Coronado island and you have some prime beach fun.

Samzorz

Coronado: Behind the convention center is an incredible view. There's an overhang that looks over the harbor where you can see Coronado Bridge to Coronado Island all the way to the airport. I've captured some of my favorite sunsets from this spot!

Sightseeing and experiences

Our second widely recommended experience is the San Diego Zoo. It’s no wonder, based on these raving reviews:

I know sometimes people feel weird about the idea of animals being kept in enclosures, but the San Diego Zoo is renowned for their work in conservation and reintroduction of endangered species to the wild. They raise condors, tigers, polar bears, and are one of the few zoos to successful breed giant pandas. -Annemunition

One of my favorite places to go will always be the San Diego Zoo with friends so I can gaze in wonder at all my favorite animals and get lost in the attractions, not to mention all the Pokémon in Pokémon Go. -Dracontious

This zoo is legitimately the biggest and best zoo in the country - it’s amazing. They also have a separate Safari zone that is pretty cool as well. -Jericho

If the zoo isn’t the walk in the park you’re looking for, here are some literal walks in the park you might be looking for:

AnneMunition

Mission Beach Boardwalk: Bikers, skaters, fire pits on the sand, amusement park rides, beach volleyball... Rent a scooter and cruise the boardwalk. It's a little far from the convention center, but if you're a newcomer to this edge of the continent then Mission Beach is the peak California experience.

Jericho

The USS Midway: The Midway is a museum and tour of an aircraft carrier. It’s at your own pace, so you can go through it quickly or take your time.

KuraiNozomi

Balboa Park: Very rich in history, museums, and a joy to walk around. I often would go to take my pup to the dog park there, but I also personally love to visit the pond and try to spot turtles.

Samzorz

Mission Beach and Belmont Park: Before moving to San Diego, I always made it a habit to visit both. There's a little amusement park there and one of the best beaches San Diego has to offer. Now after living here, I still try to go as much as I possibly can!

Ready to join us? We’ve secured some early deals on hotels just for you, so book now and save some extra money for the merch store. You can also sign up for our newsletter to hear the latest about TwitchCon 2019 right as it happens.

Cool stuff to eat, see, and do in San Diego was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Q&A with Fatshark Games and Warwitch

With tons of enemies attacking you at all times, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is a hectic game. It’s hard for Twitch broadcasters to read their Chat or interact directly with their viewers. That’s why the game developer Fatshark decided to include an innovative Twitch integration that allows viewers to change the outcome of the game for the broadcaster. Every 30, 60, or 90 seconds Chat can vote on what happens in the game. The integration makes it easier for the broadcaster to play and comment on the screen.

We caught up with Fatshark and Warwitch, a Twitch creator that often streams Vermintide 2, to get the behind-the-scenes lowdown on why the integration is so cool and the technology behind it.

Q&A with Gunnar Johannson, PR Manager at Fatshark

Q: Can you tell me more about Fatshark and Vermintide 2?

Fatshark has been around for 12 years with the first title Lead and Gold debuting in 2010. It’s a tightly knit team of over 90 experienced and skilled employees, who do regular updates for Vermintide 2 and are always on the look-out for new and exciting projects.

Vermintide 2 is the sequel to the critically acclaimed Vermintide. It’s a fierce first-person, co-op slaughter-fest, featuring visceral and ground-breaking melee action set in the apocalyptic End Times of the war-ravaged Warhammer Fantasy Battles world. The game has sold over two million units and has about 397 million minutes watched on Twitch. It was also voted the co-op game of the year by PC Gamer — and is on the cover this month for the second time. Kotaku called it the “The Best Four-Player Co-op Since Left 4 Dead.”

Today also happens to be the first anniversary of the game. You can play for free on Steam until tomorrow!

Q: Why are you excited about this Twitch integration?

A: The integration is a really great way to get the viewers engaged in the stream as well as in the game. It lets a massive amount of people play together, even though only four are playing the actual game. The audience becomes the game directors, and for the players, it’s a bit like improv theatre. The viewers get their voice out there via the voting, and suddenly the players get a Chaos Warrior to fend off.

Q: Why did you, as a company, decide to invest in this integration instead of something else?

A: We have been talking with Twitch about possibilities since they first told us about the integration, and this was a long time before the game was even announced. We had it on our list of things we wanted to include at release or shortly after. About a month before release we had a meeting where we decided between what would be in the game on day one, and what would come within a few weeks after release. With the huge — H-U-G-E — success of the beta with streamers, it was an easy decision to include the integration at launch, because it would give the streamers more options to interact with their viewers, but also show that we appreciate what they do.

It’s also fair to say that our Twitch integration was a pivotal part of the success we had on Twitch when we released the game, and Twitch is an integral part of reaching out to gamers.

Q: What are you planning to do next?

A: The integration is played daily, and we get positive feedback from so many streamers when we visit any event, etc. We are looking into what we can add, and what would be appreciated by both streamers and viewers.

Q&A with Victor Magnuson, Game Designer and Producer at Fatshark

Q: Can you briefly describe your development process? Including how you came up with the idea, how long it took, what you did to test or troubleshoot, etc.

A: During the development of Warhammer: The End Times — Vermintide we realised that the system we use to populate the world (the Ai Director) would be pretty well suited for a integration of this type. The director already took into account how the players were doing and acted accordingly. For instance, if the players took a beating, it would lay off them for a while and if a player left the group, it would send an Assassin to kill that player. We realised that we could hand some of this power over to the streaming audience and let them be a part of the streaming experience in a very direct way. So when we started development of the sequel, a strong Twitch integration felt like an obvious choice. It was also during this time that streaming as a part of the general gaming community really took off.

Q: Describe the technology behind this integration?

A: It is quite simple actually. We ask the streamer to connect with their Twitch account name in the the game, we then send a request to “https://api.twitch.tv/kraken/users?login=" .. <twitch_user_name> to collect their data. If we get a positive response we check their user_id with a https request to “https://api.twitch.tv/kraken/streams/" .. <user_id> to see if they have an active stream going. We then use the channel name for the stream to connect to “irc.chat.twitch.tv” and join their channel. This allows us to constantly parse their Chat and use that to look for answers to the queries that we present on screen. We also make sure that the same user cannot vote multiple times.

Q: What learnings or best practices would you share about developing integrations with Twitch?

A: Keep it as simple as possible but make sure that whatever the audience is doing in the game is very noticeable; you want the viewers to feel like they are impacting what is going on in the game and easily recognise that what is happening is due to their involvement. Another thing is that the audience will most likely either try to always help the streamer or always make the life difficult for the streamer, so when you have multiple options for the viewers to choose from, try to make them balanced, otherwise the results tend to become very similar. For example, if the options are opposites (a good and a bad choice) dependent on the relationship between the streamer and their Chat, the result will always be the bad or the good choice.

Q&A with Warwitch, Twitch Creator

Q: Can you tell us about yourself and your Twitch Channel?

A: My name is Warwitch from WarwitchTV and I’ve been a Twitch Partner for nearly five amazing years. I play a variety of exciting games, Vermintide 2 being one of my favorites, and also my first experience with Twitch integration.

Q: Please describe (briefly) your experience with Twitch integration.

A: I had actually never heard about integration until the release of Vermintide 2. I was naturally excited and interested, so I tried the feature out as soon as I was able. I immediately loved the fact that my viewers were able to shape events in the game directly. It’s fun to watch as they laugh and chuckle when their votes have a lasting impact on what happens.

Q: What benefits does the integration give you as a streamer? How does it enhance the viewer experience?

A: When my viewers are integrated into the game, I find it improves every element of my stream. I always try to make my viewers feel that they are a real part of the show (not just spectators), and integration really helps to make that happen. One of the coolest things I’ve seen about Twitch integration is how it empowers lurkers who may not otherwise have much to say to get involved in the stream. That’s very important to me. I try to interact with as many of my viewers as I can, and with Twitch integration that becomes even easier.

Q: How did you find out about the integration?

A: Vermintide 2 was the first time I had actually ever heard of integration in streams. When the devs announced that viewers would be able to have a hand in the events of a game I was playing I was thrilled. It’s been one of my favorite features to use during my live streams since.

Q: Any ideas for how it could be improved?

A: More options to vote on is always a good idea. More ways the viewer can impact and change the flow of the game. People also love to see their own names “up in lights,” so to speak. I’ve seen some integrated games that even copy the names of viewers who voted and place them in game as a boss or enemy to face. That’s a very fun experience for a viewer!

Q: Would you encourage other streamers to use Twitch integrations or Extensions? If so, why?

A: Absolutely! It’s a super fun way to get to know your community better and let them either help (or destroy) you. Either way, it’s a win. Twitch integration is an incredible way to bond with your community and just a whole lot of fun!

For more information on Vermintide 2 or Fatshark, visit https://www.fatshark.se/.

As always, let us know what you think by connecting with us @TwitchDev on Twitter, in the developer forums, or on our live broadcasts (follow us for notifications when we’re live).

Ready to build interactive experiences on Twitch? Start now!

A Twitch Integration Lets the Viewers Call the Shots was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Next week is the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco! That special time of year when we get to show some extra love to our game developer community by highlighting what Twitch does best, celebrating video games and those that create them.

As we buckle in for this exciting week, here’s how you can connect with our team.

Monday, March 18

Amazon Developer Day sessions

1:20pm — Making Decisions with Big Data: Game development is all about making choices. But without the right data, how do you know what’s worth the development effort and cost? Learn how analytics solutions from Amazon can help you build (and refine) content that players truly enjoy.

4:00pm — Grow your Game with Twitch: Using Twitch to reach customers is a given, but now you can break through in all new ways. In this session, learn how to empower your streamers to win you customers through tournament creation tools, in-Twitch game invites, and much more.

Tuesday, March 19

Amazon Developer Day sessions

10:00am — Twitch for Games Playbook: This session dives in to explore best practices and easy ways to integrate Twitch into your game regardless of where you are at in your development lifecycle.

11:20am — Creating Player Engagement Through Content, Competition, and Conversation: By using smarter AI, intelligent conversations, and dynamic content, you can help create engagement. Learn new ways to leverage this technology to drive in-game real world prizing, easy to set up tournaments, influence marketing, and even Alexa — all available today from Amazon Game Tech.

Andddd .. we’ve got a sweet Booth to hang all day with you on the show floor! Stop by, say hello 👋🏼 , grab some sweet Twitch merch 💜, and come chat about growing your game with Twitch!

Wednesday, March 20

All Day — Stop by Booth #S741 on the GDC show floor

3:30pm — 5:30pm — Twitch and Amazon Game Studio recruiting happy hour: Join Twitch and Amazon Games for food, drinks, and information about career opportunities!

Thursday, March 21

All Day — Stop by Booth #S741 on the GDC show floor

6:30–9:00pm — Twitch and Amazon Game Tech Happy hour: Join us in our booth (#S741) as well as Amazon’s booth for a happy hour where you can enjoy food, drinks, and networking.

Friday, March 22

All Day — Stop by Booth #S741 on the GDC show floor

Not going to be in San Francisco for GDC? Don’t worry! We have an array of live streamed shows we will be streaming this week.

Thursday, March 21

TwitchDev Weekly: Join Jon and Matt, Twitch’s developer advocates, as they present from the Twitch booth at GDC.

Friday, March 22

Extension Challenge Announcement: We will be announcing the winner of the Extension Challenge powered by AWS; don’t miss a chance to see all the great ideas as well as who won!

We are looking forward to connecting with you at GDC!

__________________________

Note that we will not be hosting our monthly Developer Update stream at its normal time; it’s moving it to the following week, Tuesday, March 26 at 10am PT. We’ll be recapping all the action from GDC along with new product updates and announcements.

All Things Twitch at GDC was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Curious how Twitch Identity services addresses scalability and performance challenges related to authentication?

Last Tuesday, the Twitch Identity team — which helps Twitch users create and manage their digital identity and owns the services that provide authentication, authorization, and user metadata management — hosted a Meetup.com event to explain just that. But we’re recapping here just for you!

First challenge: Login form load

The goal of authentication is to verify who the user is. In a typical login flow, the user supplies a password along with a username and the service validates the credentials.

The Twitch Login form used to load very slowly, as long as 10 seconds in some Asian and Pacific countries. The browser had to make a DNS request for the authentication backend, initiate a TLS connection to authentication service, make a request to load the page, and then make additional requests for more assets. Altogether, there were five round trips and over 150 KB of data transfer.

To improve load latency, the team considered a few options: prefetching, connection reuse, inlining, and lazy loading.

Ultimately, the solution relies mostly on prefetching by making the login modal part of the main page, but it employs lazy load for fetching heavy assets. As a result, the median load latency dropped as much as 20x from 4.1 sec to 0.2 sec.

Second challenge: User session validation

At the end of the login flow, the browser obtains a long-lived OAuth 2.0 access token and stores it in a cookie. This token is required for subsequent requests to the Twitch API and the corresponding downstream services.

If each service had to validate the OAuth token directly against the token dispensary, the latter would need to handle calls from multiple services for every API request. To reduce the workload, the Identity team implemented an approach that employs self-contained JSON Web Tokens (JWT).

In this approach, before forwarding the request to downstream services, the API calls a JWT Authority service, which validates the OAuth token and generates a short-lived JWT token. The latter contains a user id, scopes, and a digital signature. The API includes a JWT token in calls to all downstream services instead of an OAuth token. The services validate the digital signature in the JWT token and read the payload. This design dramatically reduces the number of requests to the token dispensary.

Check out the VOD now for the whole talk.

Future projects

The Identity team has a roadmap that extends into 2020, which includes improvements in the detection and prevention of malicious behavior, security enhancements, federated identity, service re-architecture, etc.

If you are interested in joining the team, we are currently hiring in San Francisco.

How Twitch Addresses Scalability and Authentication was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

They came. They sang. And they brought the house down.

After watching all of the incredible Twitch Sings: Stream Star auditions, narrowing the field down to only eight semi-finalists was a tough job. They all made us laugh, cry, or sing along, and all brought their unique energy to the competition, but these eight just had a little something extra.

So without further ado, meet your Twitch Sings: Stream Star Semi-Finalists! Make sure to check out their channel pages and follow them so you don’t miss a note.

MeganLenius — USA

A Twitch music community stalwart, MeganLenius has been wowing us for quite some time now. A true double threat, you can find her rocking out on guitar and blowing everyone away with her incredible vocals. Everyone watching the Semi-Finals is in for a treat when she takes the stage.

RaquelLily — USA

Musician. Writer. Producer. That’s RaquelLily. From the first time we heard her, we were impressed. And when she’s not on Twitch, you can catch her playing guitar, rocking live shows, and recording her own original music.

MermaidUnicorn — Canada

MermaidUnicorn can play over 40 different instruments. We can’t even name 40 instruments. With her powerful vocals and a personality as colorful as her hair, we can’t wait to see (and hear) what she brings to the Semi-Finals.

NucciKabucci — USA

With his impressive levels of enthusiasm and charisma, if NucciKabucci doesn’t put a smile on your face, you may want to check if you have a mouth. This gamer with a knack for singing and impressions is going to be a blast to watch.

LaraLoft — Germany

Singing, gaming, voice acting…LaraLoft is pretty darn good at everything. This The Voice of Germany veteran is bringing her talents to Twitch Sings: Stream Star and we can’t wait to watch her do her thing.

Narindipity — USA

Narindipity personifies what this competition is all about. Following your dreams no matter what you’re facing. She put her entire heart and soul into this, and her silky smooth vocals prove it.

BrianBBright — USA

Brian has been bringing the fire vocals since the early days of the Twitch Sings beta. And with a repertoire that ranges from Andrea Bocelli to Eminem, we can confirm he has some serious range.

LTChicken — USA

A true entertainer, LTChicken’s audition put a huge smile on our face. He expertly combined his passion for streaming and his passion for music and we’re glad he’s joining us in the Semi’s.

So, who’s going to TwitchCon Europe to compete in the finals? That’s up to you, dear audience. All eight semi-finalists will compete on Friday March 22 at 11AM PT, live on /Twitch. You, the community will vote for the four finalists via extension, so make sure you don’t miss out on Sings history.

And to all our semi-finalists, congratulations on making it this far. The determination, talent, and guts you’ve shown are truly inspiring. We’ll see you in the Semi-Finals!

Meet your Twitch Sings: Stream Star Semi-Finalists was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Almost exactly two years ago, Twitch launched the “Community MeetUps, Powered by Twitch” program to help Twitch community members connect locally. At launch, there were 20 groups established across Australia, Canada, and the United States. The #bleedpurple spirit that fuels these MeetUps is bigger and better than ever. Since then, we’ve added London to the list, and volunteer organizers have more than doubled the number of cities participating across the globe.

MeetUps recreate some of the best parts of what you’d experience at a convention: IRL friendship, networking with sponsors, gaming, karaoke, and more! It’s like your own little TwitchCon to help keep FOMO away or fight off those post-con blues. With more members of the Twitch community wanting to join the the fun, we’re making it easier to find, join in, and MeetUp. So, starting today, we’re launching MeetUps.twitch.tv.

Without ever having to leave Twitch, you can search for MeetUp groups in your city, register for future events, and get connected with others in your area, all using your Twitch account.

In 2019, we’re connecting with more Twitch users, more often, in more places, and in more meaningful ways, and MeetUps is just one of them. From TwitchCon Europe, to E3 and PAX West, to TwitchCon in San Diego, we hope there’s an opportunity to you to get involved and say HeyGuys!

Now it’s easier than ever to MeetUp was originally published in Twitch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.