The streaming community is in chaos today as one of the new members of Amazon-owned Twitch's "Safety Advisory Council" suggested that multiplayer games remove their voice chats as it creates an "uneven playing field."
Twitch Council Member Under Fire
According to a report by Dexerto, the member that drew the ire of the Twitch streaming community is a popular streamer herself: FerociouslySteph.
During a May 14 broadcast, the streamer said that "voice chat is unfair" and suggested that "the only way to have a level playing field for the highest level of play is not to have voice-chat... to not have people give up their linguistic profiles."
As soon as the broadcast happened, the community quickly responded, with the majority of her fellow streamers disputing her claims.
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Streaming Community Disagree
Among them is World of Warcraft star Asmongold, who even suggested that Twitch might have "made a big mistake" by adding FerociouslySteph to the council judging by the clips and content he has seen.
He even said that it would "only discredit the effort."
Fellow video game streamer Panda supported his statement and even said that it did not have anything to do with gender nor race and was simply due to a "bad take on comms."
Soon after, the council member in question responded to the criticisms and posted on her official Twitter account: "Yeah, whole [sic] lot of people with cis-white-male voices thinking voice chat is critical to competitive games being competitive."
Oooo yeah whole lot of people with cis-white-male voices thinking voice chat is critical to competitive games being competitive.
Tell me more about how we'll solve systemic misogyny and everything will be fine~ lol. — FerociouslySteph (@FerociouslyS) May 14, 2020
This was not the first the streamer suggested to remove voice chats.
In 2018, she also took to Twitter to suggest to modern game publishers the removal of voice chat as she believes adding the feature is promoting anti-inclusivity.
Twitch is yet to comment on the issue.
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Forming the Safety Advisory Council
The Amazon-owned streaming website announced the formation of their Safety Advisory Council this Thursday, May 14, to help address the platform's various complicated issues, such as work-life balance, moderation, and ensuring the interests of marginalized communities, as noted by Kotaku.
Twitch issued a press release to explain the council's formation and their duty, which include guidance on the following areas besides the ones mentioned above:
- Drafting new policies and policy updates
- Identifying emerging trends that could impact the Twitch experience
- Developing features and products that improve safety and moderation
According to Engadget, the council is made up of eight people, with four of them as popular streamers in the platform, including, of course, FerociouslySteph alongside veteran and well-known streamers CohhCarnage, Zizaran, and CupAhNoodle.
Meanwhile, the other members include T.L. Taylor, the author of the book Watch Me Play, which tackles video game streaming and Twitch.
There are also heads of nonprofits, including Emma Llansó from the Center For Democracy and Technology's Free Expression Project; Alex Holmes, the CEO of The Diana Award; and Dr. Sameer Hinduja, the co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center.
When Twitch created the council, they wanted to include experts who can provide an external perspective as well as Twitch streamers who know and understand the issues within the platform.
As of now, there are over 1.2 million Twitch users around the world.
