- Card game makers sent private detectives to raid YouTuber’s house after he streamed unreleased version New York Post
- Magic ‘Raid’: Wizards of the Coast and Pinkertons Update Gizmodo
- Wizards Of The Coast Has Reportedly Used Pinkertons Multiple Times TheGamer
- Wizards of the Coast sends Pinkerton agents after YouTuber who unboxed a leaked Magic: The Gathering card set Boing Boing
- Wizards Of The Coast Reportedly Threatens Jail Time Against Player Who Was Accidentally But Legally Sold Upcoming Magic: The Gathering Set Ahead Of Official Street Date Bounding Into Comics
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: YouTubers
Wizards Of The Coast Raids YouTuber’s House To Take Back Magic: The Gathering Cards [Update] – Kotaku Australia
- Wizards Of The Coast Raids YouTuber’s House To Take Back Magic: The Gathering Cards [Update] Kotaku Australia
- Magic ‘Raid’: Wizards of the Coast and Pinkertons Update Gizmodo
- Wizards Of The Coast Has Reportedly Used Pinkertons Multiple Times TheGamer
- Card game makers sent private detectives to raid YouTuber’s house after he streamed unreleased version New York Post
- Wizards Of The Coast Reportedly Threatens Jail Time Against Player Who Was Accidentally But Legally Sold Upcoming Magic: The Gathering Set Ahead Of Official Street Date Bounding Into Comics
- View Full Coverage on Google News
YouTuber’s Pet Fish Streams Pokemon, Then Commits Credit Card Fraud
YouTuber Mutekimaru Channel is well-known for livestreaming their pet fish playing various games through motion tracking software, which registers the pets’ positions as button inputs. The fish have accomplished some pretty impressive things during these streams — in 2020, they even beat Pokemon Sapphire after a 3,195 hour run. But earlier this month, their fish did what no fish has (hopefully) done before: commit credit card fraud.
During a livestream 12 days ago, the fish were off to a good start in Pokemon Violet, winning a few battles and slowly but surely progressing through the story. About 5 hours into the stream, however, the game crashed, giving the fish free access to the rest of their owner’s Switch.
These fish committed credit card fraud while playing Pokémon. 💳🐟🐟🐟🐟 pic.twitter.com/w0TgKgJSUL
— IGN (@IGN) January 25, 2023
From there, the fish went to the eShop and added 500 yen (about $3.85) of funds to their owner’s account, even exposing their owner’s credit card information to viewers in the process.
They also sent their owner a PayPal verification email, redeemed Nintendo Switch Online points for a Nintendo Switch Sports profile picture, and downloaded the Switch’s Nintendo 64 emulator app.
Luckily, according to TechSpot, the YouTuber was able to get a refund after explaining the situation to Nintendo.
We gave Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet a 6 in our review, praising its massive open world and story but criticizing its all too apparent performance issues.
Amelia Zollner is a freelance writer at IGN who loves all things indie and Nintendo. Outside of IGN, they’ve contributed to sites like Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun. Find them on Twitter: @ameliazollner.
Streamer Makes Leap To YouTube After Twitch Misspells His Name
Sykkuno, one of Twitch’s top streamers known for his wholesome demeanor and for playing games like Among Us and GTA Online, left the Amazon-owned platform for the red pastures of YouTube Gaming this month. The move shocked the livestreaming space because Sykkuno was something of a household name on Twitch, boasting four million followers and 103 million total views since becoming a more consistent streamer in April 2019. However, the switch made sense for him because, as he revealed during his first-ever YouTube Gaming livestream, the Google-owned platform offered him a slightly better deal, and Twitch gave his name a rather unfortunate misspelling in an official email.
You might not have heard of him, but Sykkuno has been on YouTube for years. In fact, an old account of his can be traced back to April 2006, where he uploaded League of Legends and Minecraft content before moving to his current channel, which now has 2.75 million subscribers, in September 2011. While Sykkuno spent much of his early career on YouTube, he didn’t make a name for himself as a streamer until April 2019, when he began broadcasting regularly on the Twitch channel he’d created years before. In August 2020 he joined a collective of streamers called Offline TV, which includes other online personalities like DisguisedToast and LilyPichu, and although he left the group a couple of months later in November, he has continued to see rapid growth. Now, with four million Twitch followers, Sykkuno has left the Amazon-owned platform because he believes he’ll be “much, much happier” on YouTube.
After sharing the news of his move to YouTube on social media, Sykkuno went live on May 3 to discuss the reasoning behind the switch. It was a multifaceted explanation spurred by the negotiation of his Twitch contract. He said he went to the company asking for a better deal because Twitch’s initial offer was “just bad,” though he didn’t offer specifics. Twitch came back with what Sykkuno called a “very, very good offer,” which almost convinced him to stay since it was “pretty much dead even” with YouTube’s. He even said that if Twitch’s offer was “a little worse,” he would have remained on the platform.
And yet, he didn’t. Ultimately, YouTube did make the better offer, but that wasn’t the sole deciding factor. What solidified the move, aside from the increase in money YouTube was offering, was a peculiar email Sykkuno received from Twitch.
After sharing some stats about his Twitch performance—he was the 28th highest-earning streamer and the 45th most-followed streamer of all time—he then threw up an email the company had sent him on screen, which showed an apparent Twitch spokesperson spelling his name as “Sukkuno.” You can almost feel the embarrassment emanating from Sykkuno as he discussed the email. He was so shook that he messaged folks asking if it was a phishing scam because he couldn’t believe Twitch would do that to his name.
“Maybe I have too big an ego or something, but I was shocked,” Sykkuno said during the livestream. “I legit thought I was getting scammed. I was afraid to click this email because I was like, ‘Am I about to get a virus?’”
There was some levity, with Sykkuno joking a bit about the unfortunate misspelling, but he wrapped the segment up by expressing just how unappreciated Twitch made him feel. Notably, Sykkuno’s move comes during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, during which Twitch is supposed to be “celebrating and recognizing” the huge impact AAPI streamers have had, not just on Twitch but on gaming culture as a whole. Sykkuno’s an American of Chinese and Vietnamese descent, and misspelling his name, even if it isn’t his real name, seems pretty careless. It’s no wonder he felt unappreciated, especially as anti-Asian sentiment ramps up worldwide but particularly in the U.S. due to the ongoing pandemic.
Kotaku has reached out to Sykkuno and Twitch for comment.
Streamers Aren’t Liking Twitch’s Potential Money Making Idea
Twitch is reportedly considering major changes to the monetization practices that streamers are upset about because the potentially lopsided percentages work out to pad Twitch’s bottom line.
According to a Bloomberg report, Amazon, Twitch’s parent company, is considering multiple changes to its partner program in order to boost its profits. These changes include a new revenue split from subscriptions, a new tier system, and bolstering advertisements.
One of the monetization changes under consideration is a revenue cut from subscriptions for partnered streamers, Twitch’s most popular streamers. The proposed cut would decrease the revenue partnered streamers make from subscriptions from 70% to 50%.
Another proposal Twitch is considering is adding a tiers system for partnered streamers. According to Bloomberg, these tiers detail the criteria a streamer must meet to receive 50% or 70% of revenue from their subscription. In exchange to this proposal, anonymous sources told Bloomberg that Twitch might release streamers from their exclusivity in their contracts, which will allow them to stream on Twitch’s competitor sites like YouTube and Facebook Gaming potentially to recoup any cut revenue.
Twitch is also reportedly considering incentives for more advertising through “revenue-sharing arrangement,” that Bloomberg says will present “a more lucrative model for streamers.”
Twitch streamers haven’t taken kindly to the news of Twitch’s proposed changes to its partnership program. Twitch streamer PleasantlyTwstd told Kotaku that she isn’t surprised by Twitch exploring these changes. If changes hit the website this summer as they are now, PleasantlyTwstd said smaller streamers will have “little to no incentive” to grow their channels on the platform.
“Smaller streamers I think are going to have little to no incentive at this stage to really push for growth,” PleasantlyTwstd said. “It’s going to start feeling like to make a payout you have to hit more subs and the struggle at current is discoverability at all.”
PleasantlyTwstd said she would like to see streamers be brought into the conversation about Twitch’s monetization changes so they are advocated “in earnest.”
“Twitch has been kind of in a holding pattern where their priority is making the platform more money but until they actually try to work more closely with the people who make them money or freely create tools, they’re just going to keep throwing out ideas and ‘initiatives’ that fall flat,” she said.
Leftist streamer Hasan “Hasanabi” Piker took to Twitter saying the reason Twitch made these changes is due to the company not viewing itself as having competition within the livestreaming space, so there’s little reason to offer something that’s truly compelling for its users.
“[I] love twitch but it seems like they’re moving away from [content creators] to fix their profits,” Piker said in a tweet. “Nearly my entire revenue comes from subscribers who elect to give me $5 a month. Twitch doesn’t consider the 50/50 split it takes from smaller creators in that process profitable enough. That’s wild.”
“Subscriptions are more important to the life of every streamer than almost any other utility Twitch offers and to touch the split is to financially devastate and potentially remove thousands of full-time creators from your platform it immediately,” JERICHO said.
“What a joke. Makes it worse for everyone except Twitch themselves,” Jacksepticeye said.
“Twitch is INSANE if they think this will go over well,” Max “Gassy Mexican” Gonzalez said. “Like actually will shake the platform in the worst way possible.”
Kotaku reached out to Twitch for comment.
While these proposed changes are reported to hit the website as soon as this summer, anonymous sources told Bloomberg none of these changes have been finalized.
YouTubers are sick of comment spam, so YouTube is testing a stricter moderation system
Many big YouTube creators have expressed frustration with an increase in comment spam on their channels in recent weeks, including Linus Tech Tips, Jacksepticeye, and MKBHD. The problem has been particularly acute for these high-profile creators, who often see more malicious commenters impersonate them in an attempt to scam their viewers.
“YouTube has a problem. Spam,” Linus Sebastian said to start a February 1st video on his Linus Tech Tips channel. “From crypto scams to health supplements to free Robux, it just keeps getting worse with each passing day.”
“YouTube comments spam has been next-level out of control for months,” reads the description for Marques “MKBHD” Brownlee’s April 1st video titled “YouTube Needs to Fix This.”
YouTube comment spam can take many forms. Major creators are often concerned about spam that impersonates them, promises viewers something good for messaging them, and then directs individuals off YouTube in some way to eventually scam them.
Other spam comments can be less overtly malicious but still annoying or potentially harmful. In a March 6th video, Seán “Jacksepticeye” McLoughlin discusses how his channel will get copy-pastes of genuine-looking comments, but they’ll be shared by users with names like “T[A]P Me!! To Have [S]EX With Me”. (If you see a profile with that name, do not click or tap on it.)
YouTube does have many tools to combat spammy comments, and it removes a huge amount of them automatically. Using machine learning and human review, the company removed “over 950 million comments for violating our policies around spam, misleading and scams” in Q4 2021 alone, YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said in a statement to The Verge. “The vast majority” of those removals were first detected by automated flagging systems,” Choi said.
But those systems clearly haven’t been enough, and YouTube seems to know it. Brownlee posted Friday about a new experimental moderation feature that will “increase strictness” of potentially inappropriate comments that get automatically held for review. YouTube began testing the enhanced feature in December 2021, spokesperson Mariana De Felice said, and she noted that the company first rolled out the feature to hold potentially inappropriate comments for review in 2016.
This “Increase strictness” content moderation tool is a new experiment from YouTube that’s been in the works for a bit. Hoping it can make a dent in this comment spam we’ve been seeing so much lately pic.twitter.com/KVkjVCOUKZ
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) April 8, 2022
It sounds as if YouTube is watching the issue closely. “Given the evolving nature and shifting tactics of spammy content, we’ll continue to adapt our systems to stay current,” Choi said. And creators can also take comment spam into their own hands — both Sebastian and Brownlee mentioned the “YouTube Spammer Purge” tool made by YouTuber ThioJoe, which “allows you to filter and search for spammer comments on your channel and other’s channel(s) in many different ways AND delete/report them all at once,” according to the GitHub description.
But for YouTube creators who are fielding many spammy comments right now, it’s not clear if there may be a reprieve anytime soon.
Update April 8th, 5:09PM ET: Added additional context from YouTube on the “increase strictness” feature.
Video: YouTuber’s Ultimate Switch OLED Test “Finally” Delivers Burn-In After 3,600 Hours
You might recall a story we ran earlier this year about a 1,800-hour Switch OLED burn-in test. It was done by the graphic artist and content creator Bob Wulff over on his YouTube channel the Wulff Den. At the time, there was “no noticeable burn-in”.
He’s now posted an update over on YouTube, and in this video, he reveals how the system finally has some signs of burn-in. It’s happened after about six months and roughly 3,600 hours. Again, that’s the Switch running a still screen of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild day in, day out, and it’s taken that long for ghosting to appear.
So what’s the verdict? There’s “nothing to worry about” if you are planning on buying an OLED Switch:
“Is this something you should worry about, definitely not…this took me 3,600 hours to get to this point and it’s been on this screen the whole time at full blast, that will take somebody years to do in one particular game, and again that game needs a UI element or something that doesn’t move on the screen, and that particular element needs to be on the screen for 3,600 hours a little modicum of ghosting. Even if you’re playing specifically Breath of the Wild…I don’t think this is ever gonna be an issue.
“If you’re worried about buying an OLED Switch for this reason, you have nothing to worry about.”
Although this experiment has already proven there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to this system’s OLED panel, Wulff intends to keep going to see “how much worse it could get” and how long it will take for the system to get to an unplayable state.
Wulff thinks it’ll probably take around another 1,800 hours before the burn-in could potentially become “game-breaking”.
He’s also tested the battery, as the system has now been plugged into the charger this entire time. When it was running exclusively on battery after 3,600 hours – it could still last for 8 hours on maximum settings.
“So, if you have worries about leaving it on the charger for too long, that’s not anything to worry about, either.”
How is your own Nintendo Switch OLED model going so far? Have you encountered any screen-related problems? Leave a comment down below.
Elden Ring: YouTubers find rune farming exploits
When you first start Elden Ring, you don’t have much in the way of armor — at least for some classes. To put it bluntly, you are weak in a harsh world. The way that players level up and increase stats, of course, is by collecting runes. Runes are part-experience points and part currency, and to get powerful, you’ll need to collect a lot of them.
Collecting runes is something that’ll happen throughout the game, even if you aren’t particularly trying. Certain activities and enemies — like clearing guards at Gatefront Ruins — will award a bunch of runes. But if you want a lot of runes really fast, you’ll have to turn to farming. Rune farming.
Naturally, YouTube is already ablaze with some exploits and creative methods to farm runes. YouTuber TagBackTV created a video on a method that can earn players 585,600 runes per hour, he said.
He outlines the method in the video, but essentially, there’s a specific area where the player is able to trigger a boulder. The boulder will roll off the edge of a nearby cliff and gain players thousands of runes. Then you refresh back to the site of grace and do this again. And again and again and again. And there’s no fighting!
Arekkz Gaming has another video for an early Elden Ring rune farm. This one requires some fighting, however, but it’s a relatively simple process for getting lots of runes in a short amount of time. Each kill in this method grants 1,000 runes each.
Polygon, too, has a guide for Elden Ring rune farming. Our guide focuses largely on West Limgrave, the starting location for Elden Ring.
If you’re looking something that’s less like an exploit and more like an optimized route straight out of Elden Ring’s gate, Boomstick Gaming created a video with instructions for a 15-minute path to being overpowered.
Runes! Runes everywhere!
Popular Streamer Ludwig Ahgren leaves Twitch For YouTube Gaming
Twitch streamer Ludwig Ahgren, who in April set a world record for the highest number of subscribers—at over 270,000—has left the platform and will now be streaming exclusively at YouTube Gaming.
Ludwig achieved the feat at the conclusion of a marathon 31-day streaming event, which began on March 14 and ran for too damn long. In the process, he beat the previous record, held by Tyler “Ninja” Blevins.
The move was announced earlier today by Ryan Wyatt, head of YouTube Gaming, who wrote:
I’m excited to announce @LudwigAhgren will now be streaming exclusively on @YouTubeGaming.
Our focus is building a world class VOD, short form, and live platform.
And I have to reiterate; we still aren’t done yet! Welcome to the family, Ludwig!
Ludwigs own announcement was a little less diplomatic, posting a video where the purple car (Twitch) he’s driving explodes, and he jumps in a red car (YouTube) to get home again, talking some shit about music streaming rights as the clip draws to a close.
G/O Media may get a commission
Harsh, perhaps, given he built his entire thing on Twitch, but given the platform’s recent woes—especially when it comes to copyright—also understandable.
He probably wouldn’t make the jump out of charity; YouTube has long thrown serious money at creators to sign them to exclusivity deals, hoping that by drawing big names they can chip away at Twitch’s dominance in the streaming space. Indeed it was only a few months ago that two other huge streaming stars, DrLupo and TimTheTatman, made the same move:
Lupo told The Washington Post this week that, as a result of his deal with YouTube, he’s now “secure for life.” He also said the deal will give him more flexibility to spend time with his family. Betar, meanwhile, didn’t explicitly comment on specific financials, but noted in an interview with Insider that streaming on YouTube will allow him, like Lupo, to spend more time with family.
Amouranth’s Twitch Stats Vs Other Women Streamers Are Shocking
When Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa isn’t getting banned from Twitch for things like wearing a horse mask and suggestively slurping a microphone, she’s pulling huge viewership numbers month after month. Not only was she Twitch’s leading female streamer for October, she accrued almost as many view hours as the next two biggest female streamers combined.
That’s according to the latest data from Twitch analytics firm StreamElements, via Rainmaker.gg, which shows Siragusa pulled in roughly 3.1 million hours watched last month, nearly double Imane “Pokimane” Anys’s estimated 1.7 million and SadDummy’s 1.5 million.
She’s done this in part by pioneering new forms of Twitch antics and trolling. Earlier this year, she became one of the faces of the Amazon-owned streaming platform’s burgeoning hot tub-meta. Later she moved onto Twitch’s ear-licking ASMR meta with a July subathon dedicated to the genre. Just last week, Siragusa shocked fans and internet passers-by alike when she claimed to have purchased a gas station to get out of millions in tax liability.
Read More: Amouranth Is Twitch’s Smartest Troll, But She’s On Thin Ice
While traditional Twitch streamers blow up thanks to the success of the games they play, like League of Legends, Fortnite, GTA V, Siragusa has transformed her online personality into a multi-million dollar brand predominantly by streaming ASMR stunts and Just Chatting convos with her audience.
Of course, her October numbers are still outside Twitch’s general top 10 which is completely male dominated. According to StreamElements, the last streamer on the list for October, Chikara ‘Shaka’ Kawakam, still brought in well over 5 million watched hours.
These discrepancies were born out in Twitch’s own data, which when it leaked last month due to hackers revealed that only three of the platform’s top 100 earners were women. Of course, most make nothing at all. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the median revenue for all Twitch streamers was $28, meaning half of them made even less.