3 Twitch controversies that took over the internet in 2021

Although 2021 may have been a great year for streamers, it was definitely not the best for Twitch as a platform. The platform has seen several controversies take place throughout the year, and it was clear that the era of the Twitch monopoly in the streaming community was over.

Here are three Twitch controversies that had the internet hooked on to them for days.

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Twitch was full of controversies this year

A Day Off Twitch

Twitch was becoming a hub for hate raids and harassment for many streamers on the platform. Smaller streamers, streamers belonging to minority communities and several others were regularly becoming victims of these hate raids and Twitch did nothing about it.

Naturally, streamers took it upon themselves to express their displeasure about the blind eye that the platform was turning towards its streamers.

To do so, streamers decided to take a day off Twitch on September 1, where they would simply not stream anything on their channels. This essentially led to a Twitch blackout, which forced the platform to act upon the demands of the streamers.

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Surge of streamers moving from Twitch to YouTube

2021 saw a huge number of streamers bidding adieu to the purple platform to jump ship to the red halls of YouTube. Many prominent names like Valkyrae, TimTheTatman, DrLupo, and Ludwig, shifted over to YouTube. This also gave rise to a huge debate as to why streamers were shifting from Twitch to YouTube.

Most streamers seemed to agree that other platforms were willing to offer them more money than Twitch, which was one of the biggest factors. Furthermore, Twitch's rigid rules also made it difficult for streamers to continue on the platform. However, Twitch did retain some of its biggest stars like xQc and Pokimane, and recently welcomed back Disguised Toast as well.

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Twitch data leak

If the year wasn't bad enough for Twitch, early in October, the platform saw a massive data breach, which leaked a lot of sensitive information online. This included source codes for the website, passwords, and a lot of other information such as streamer pay, among others.

This took the internet by storm, especially since people's privacy was at stake. Luckily for Twitch, most streamers took the data leak really well, although their fans did not seem to have the same reaction.

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Although 2021 was not Twitch's year, fans are hopeful that next year will be better for the platform if it works on its vices and puts in the effort to retain its position as the top streaming platform.