A game streaming service banned an emote and now things will never be the same

The situation

Twitch’s decision to remove the emote was due to a tweet made by Ryan Gutierrez, also known as “Gootecks”, a personality in the fighting game space. Following the storming of Capitol Hill by pro-Trump supporters, a woman passed away after being shot inside the building. Due to this event, Gootecks appeared to support continued “civil unrest” to his followers and attempted to share a video depicting the woman passing on, labelling her a martyr.

Subsequent to many Twitch streamers deciding the ban the emote on their own individual channels, Twitch made the decision to ban the use of the emote on the service entirely.

“We’ve made the decision to remove the PogChamp emote following statements from the face of the emote encouraging further violence after what took place in the Capitol today.” — Twitch

Twitch has indicated that they will be working with the community in order to replace the former “PogChamp” emote with something equally deserving of the most hype moments on Twitch.

Boiling it down

Close your eyes and think of the face you make when something excites you. How do you facially express the whirlwind of emotions from your team winning the NBA finals? Or from getting a promotion? Or from watching your baby’s first steps? Millions of people lost that face today, on Twitch.

Reactions to every win, fail, clutch, and play is captured as a different emote — an instantaneous reaction by viewers that they can paste in the chat box of each stream, which is then seen by the player. Thousands of emotes are being sent every second, with “PogChamp” ranked as #5 of the most used of all time having being sent 813,916,297 times total.

“PogChamp” is one of the oldest emotes on the platform, based on this video from 2011, and is used to express excitement in stream chat. The emote has become engrained within gaming culture, surpassing being used just on Twitch to entering common gaming vocabulary. With “PogChamp” now deceased, a humungous void will need filling as spectators now must express excitement without the face that has brought joy to so many. RIP “PogChamp”, you will be missed.

A game streaming service banned an emote and now things will never be the same

What gamers are talking about, boiled down, in 1:41 minutes.

If you want to be a famous emote, don’t incite violence

The situation

Boiling it down