X

Ninja disgusted with Twitch after pornography appears on his channel

The Fortnite pro criticizes the video streaming giant for using his offline channel to promote content across the site.

ryan-hs-2020
ryan-hs-2020
Jackson Ryan Former Science Editor
Jackson Ryan was CNET's science editor, and a multiple award-winning one at that. Earlier, he'd been a scientist, but he realized he wasn't very happy sitting at a lab bench all day. Science writing, he realized, was the best job in the world -- it let him tell stories about space, the planet, climate change and the people working at the frontiers of human knowledge. He also owns a lot of ugly Christmas sweaters.
See full bio
Jackson Ryan
2 min read
ninja

Tyler "Ninja" Blevins.

 Getty/Johannes Eisele

One of the world's most popular video game streamers, the blue-and-red-haired Tyler " Ninja " Blevins, has taken to Twitter to air his grievances with video streaming Goliath Twitch , after pornography appeared on his offline channel on Sunday. After dropping Twitch video and moving to rival platform Mixer earlier this month, Ninja's channel was being used to promote other content across the platform.

Blevins made his name streaming Fortnite and had amassed around 14.5 million followers on Twitch before jumping ship to Microsoft's Mixer on a new exclusive deal. His Twitch channel remained available to view, but offline, with Twitch taking the unusual step of promoting a feed of "popular Fortnite channels" across the streaming service in place of the usual offline page. The top channel on that feed featured hardcore pornography.

Blevins took to Twitter with a message for his followers that he was "disgusted and so sorry" about the mishap.

A subsequent tweet stated "this wouldn't even have been an issue if they didnt (sic) use my channel to promote others in the first place." Blevins notes this practice isn't the norm for Twitch streamers who have changed platform, with dormant channels usually featuring a breakdown of the streamers channel information. Not so for the ridiculously popular page run by Ninja, however, with a message that read "the streamer you're looking for is in another castle."

Shortly after Ninja's video went live, Twitch pulled the plug, reverting the channel to the normal state and removing the message.

Twitch CEO Emmett Shear responded, via Twitter, on Sunday evening, saying the company has been "experimenting with showing recommended content across Twitch, including on streamer's pages that are offline," in addition to personally apologizing to Blevins for the indiscretion.

Fortnite's Epic spectacular at E3 2019

Fortnite at E3
Fortnite at E3
Fortnite at E3
+13 more
See all photos

Originally published Aug. 11, 5:12 p.m. PT.

Update, 6:46 p.m.: Adds Emmett Shear comments.

Correction, Aug 12: Earlier version of this article listed Ninja as having 14.5 million subscribers. Twitch calls these "followers".