COMMUNITY UPDATE
The One About the Streaming Industry
It’s been a whirlwind week for streamers. With multiple high-profile Twitch streamers being permanently banned from the platform after allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault surfaced and an industry-wide call for platforms to take notice and, more importantly, action against the perpetrators, as well as seeing Mixer, Microsoft’s streaming service, be sold off to Facebook, leaving it’s entire community of streamers to fend for themselves and rebuild on alternative platforms with little to no notice.
TRIGGER WARNING: This article contains references to sexual abuse.
In the interest of keeping our readers safe we want to make you aware that some portions of this article make references to allegations of rape, sexual abuse and sexual misconduct that may negatively impact some of our readers.
This month, we want to address a number of issues in our Community Update. We have no doubt you’ve been keeping up to date with the current goings on in the streaming industry over the past week and we want to take the time to both address the issues that have been brought to light as well as letting you know how the TRW community intends to move forward in supporting all our streamers and members.
Our Stance on Sexual Harassment, Abuse & Discrimination
This will be covered more in depth in a separate update, there’s a lot to address and we don’t want to gloss over anything. That being said, we felt it was appropriate to address the widespread issue in this Community Update.
Before we continue, we want to thank each and every person who has come forward, whether in person or anonymously, to share their stories and help to shed light on these issues. Abusers use fear tactics to prevent their victims from speaking out. You have come together to fight back against them in an incredible display of bravery and solidarity. We applaud you all.
Over the past week, we have seen dozens of extremely brave people coming forward with their stories of abuse and harassment from a number of high-profile streamers and staff members across the streaming industry.
We want to assure you that we take all allegations of sexual harassment and abuse extremely seriously. We have been fortunate enough to not have to deal with any such cases within TRW, but we are still going to be taking steps to ensure that, should it arise in the future, our members have a direct way to contact us about it and report it anonymously.
We have a zero tolerance policy in TRW regarding all forms of harassment and abuse and we’re also taking steps to refine our community rules to better reflect our stance on harassment as well as providing additional measures our community can use to file reports.
How We Deal with Harassment Reports
When someone in our community is reported for any form of harassment, we immediately postpone all privileges within the community while we investigate the allegations.
In the case our investigation finds there is grounds for action, the individual will be permanently removed from our community. We will also take the necessary steps to report our findings to the individual’s streaming platform, who in turn will run their own investigation. These platforms are better equipped to inform local authorities of any potential risks than we are.
Currently, the best way to contact us regarding any reports of misconduct within TRW is to contact us through Discord or, alternatively, email us at support@trwstreaming.tv. We are also working on providing alternative methods of reporting these issues that will help reporters remain anonymous. We will provide an update as soon as we have this in place.
While we don’t like the idea of asking for proof, especially in sexual harassment cases, any additional information you can send us along with your report will help us in our investigations, so please send any additional information you have along with your report.
Mixer Shutdown
As we’re sure you’re aware by now, Mixer, Microsoft’s streaming platform, informed it’s users and staff this week of it’s intent to shut down in a tweet on the @WatchMixer Twitter account:
The news came on the back of a number of Mixer partners being called out for harassment and abuse. While no official statement was made to address the allegations against a number of partners and staff members, Xbox’s Phil Spencer posted a tweet informing users that this move was not related to the reported sexual abuse and racism issues.
While we’re aware of a number of factors that lead to the decision to close down the operations division of Mixer, we want to mainly address the timing and manner in which this announcement was made.
As we mentioned previously, this announcement was made during a time when the collective streaming community was calling for answers and change regarding systematic sexual abuse and predatory behaviour among partners and staff as well as racist comments from staff members.
The above notice from Mixer states that they will be remaining open until 22nd July 2020, yet they have made no effort to address the issues that have been raised by the community as a whole (barring a single comment in a Twitter thread). At the time of writing, there has still been no official statement regarding any action being taken to address any of these issues.
It has also come to light that even Mixer staff were unaware of the planned move to Facebook Gaming, with a number of Mixer staff reporting that they find out about the move via the tweet posted above.
Facebook Gaming have since posted their own update regarding the move assuring users that no members of Mixer’s staff were acquired in the merger and that any reports of abuse and misconduct would be factored into users applications to their streaming platform. You can see their official announcement in the thread below:
While Facebook have finally addressed some of the issues Mixer users had about the platform and the merger with Mixer, it was unclear from Mixer’s own announcement what this move would mean for it’s own streamers and partners, leaving many to abandon the platform in favour of Twitch or Trovo instead of moving with the platform to Facebook.
Had Mixer been more transparent about the move and it’s impact on the Mixer community, they may have had more success in convincing streamers to move with the platform, instead it seems only a handful of streamers decided to follow through with Mixer’s suggestion of joining Facebook Gaming, leading to the majority of the Mixer community returning to or opening Twitch, Trovo and D-Live accounts to continue their streaming careers.
Our Commitment to You
We’re aware that this change means a number of communities are now fractured between different platforms. We want to assure all of you that our commitment to create a safe and welcoming community for all streamers, regardless of platform, is still true.
This shakeup comes in the middle of us preparing to launch our new Discord server with updated tools for promotion and networking for our streamers. Unfortunately, with the impending closure of Mixer, we now have to take some additional time to remove any parts of our new Discord App that relies on connection to Mixer services to avoid unnecessary downtime in the future.
We’re also taking the necessary steps to ensure full support for Twitch streamers initially, with plans for Trovo and D-Live support already in the pipeline.
An official decision hasn’t been made regarding support for Facebook Gaming yet as we’re still waiting on some information we feel is relevant in our decision making process, however if any of our members have decided to move to Facebook Gaming, please let us know as we will be providing support on a case by case basis for now.
The TRW Stream Team
Early last year, TRW announced the formation of the TRW Stream Team on Mixer. As of right now, the Stream Team still exists and our team members have been working hard to provide useful information and help our community members to transition to their new streaming platforms.
We intend to continue to build and grow our Stream Team, however we’re currently unsure what format this will take in the future. There are strict procedures in place on Twitch regarding the formation of Stream Teams on the platform, with Team creation applications currently restricted to partners only. We have approached Twitch with a request for more information but are yet to hear back at the time of writing.
With this in mind, we are currently working on a 3rd party solution to continue to support the TRW Stream Team. Right now this is limited to a dedicated space in our Discord server, however we have a plan in place that will allow us to accept team members from more than one platform in the future, allowing us to build a truly unified and diverse team of streamers from multiple streaming platforms.
We will have more information on this as we develop our solution and ask for input and feedback before we begin implementing it.
The Future of TRW
We know change can be scary, and the idea of having to start rebuilding our communities from the ground up is a daunting one, but we want to take a moment to thank everyone from Mixer, Twitch and beyond who have gone out of their way to make this transition as easy as possible for Mixer streamers.
The amount of love and support we’ve seen in the streaming industry over the past week, whether it’s been solidarity between victims of abuse and harassment, companies and organisations stepping up and making radical changes to their own platforms to help support Mixer streamers, developers and individuals creating everything from alerts, overlays and Twitch panels and providing links to support articles, help topics and tools to make it easier for Mixer streamers to get started on Twitch.
We’re extremely proud of the initiative and resilience everyone has shown during this time, both from within and outside TRW. We want to assure you all we plan to continue building the TRW community and doing everything we can to support you all in your journeys as streamers. It’s going to be a busy time for us as we make all the necessary adjustments, but we’re working as hard and fast as we can to get everything up and running again as quickly as possible for you.
Once again, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you all for your continued support of us and our community.
—
The TRW Management Team
