SweetieGames

Many gaming fans enjoy watching content on the streaming platform Twitch; according to TwitchTracker, the platform averages over 7 million streaming channels per month. Twitch is a cornerstone of the gaming community, allowing people to interact with gaming creators and other fans in real time while enjoying a shared hobby.

TwitchCon, a convention for content creators and fans, has been held in America since 2015 and expanded to Europe in 2019. It has been the home of huge livestream and esports events as well as meet and greets for fans. Protecting the safety of both fans and creators alike has to be a top priority at any large scale event, especially one as big as TwitchCon, but this year there has been outrage as safety was not taken seriously enough.

Popular variety streamer and cosplayer Emiru was attacked during her meet and greet on the Friday of TwitchCon in San Diego. While Twitch claimed to take the matter seriously and banned the attacker from Twitch events “in person and online” indefinitely, Emiru struck back and claimed this was “a blatant lie”. She says that she was protected by her personal security and manager, that the TwitchCon staff did not help her at all and that she spent over 10 thousand dollars on security for the event. “I saw Valkyrae, Poki (Pokimane), Hasan and QT (QTCinderella) saying ‘I don’t really want to go to TwitchCon because I don’t feel safe’… I should have listened to them.”

“I spent over ten thousand dollars. Some people who stream on Twitch don’t even make that in a year. What the f*ck are they supposed to do?”

Meanwhile, other creators posted about their own issues with the event. VTubers were asked to remove their masks, which caused issues as they wear them to protect their anonymity. A VTuber meet and greet event hosted by popular VTuber IronMouse had all of the fan gifts thrown out by TwitchCon staff before they could reach their recipients and without consulting the creators first. The lack of care for security, creators and fan’s hard work has led to in depth discussions about the future of the event and even the Twitch platform itself.

Twitch CEO Dan Clancy was interviewed by Taylor Lorenz after Emiru was attacked, where he said “The safety of our creators is our top priority. The challenge we face is a challenge in today’s society; it’s not limited to Twitch. I do think when you’re live streaming, you can control your community; you can ban people, you can make it so the people you don’t want engaging with you aren’t there.” This statement was blasted on social media by content creators and fans, calling it victim blaming, deflection and lacking accountability for what happened.

What happened with Emiru reminded myself and many others that there is still a lot of work to be done with allowing women to exist in the gaming space. No woman should feel threatened or be assaulted at a meet and greet with fans, but there are still male gamers involved in toxic circles on the internet that feel this is an appropriate way to behave around other people. Security shouldn’t have let the man get to her, but there needs to be more restrictions in Twitch, online gaming lobbies and social media to stop this attitude towards women from appearing in the first place.