Streaming titan Twitch has been drawing the ire of streamers, fans and former staff alike lately with their invasive pop-ups during embedded streams. Between the notice dubbed the 'Purple Screen of Death' and other screen-obscuring pop-ups pushing the viewer to switch over to the main Twitch website, the company has been criticized for trying to hamstring creators who use embeds on other platforms.
For the last two months or so, Twitch has been rolling out the so-called 'Purple Screen of Death' across its users' embedded streams on external websites. The notice is 30 seconds long and unskippable, and pops up again every 15 minutes, advising viewers to switch over to the main Twitch website "to get the best Twitch experience." Originally considered to be an anti-adblock message from the company due to its comments suggesting that "third-party tools" might cause issues with Twitch's performance, viewers have been dismayed to find that the obtrusive message has spread to all embedded streams, not just those with ad-blockers running.
Among the critics of the practice was Twitch founding member Ben Goldhaber, who posted a thread on Twitter outlining his issues with the changes to embedding policy. Things came to a head a few days ago, when Twitch began to roll out another disruptive message in its embedded streams on top of the dreaded Purple Screen, this one prodding viewers to "get the full experience" on the main Twitch website. Goldhaber was clearly exasperated by the move, claiming that "it [is] clear that Twitch is doing what they can to hamstring their own embed product."
He went on to explain why the move was so non-sensical for the company, alleging that streamers, viewers and even Twitch itself all benefit from a streamlined embed experience. Embeds on external websites, he contested, have functionality that allows viewers to easily follow a new channel and provide experiences "facilitating discovery for new communities". He even suggested that Twitch itself would not be the giant of the streaming industry that it is today were it not for embeds, harking back to the early days of the platform showcasing Starcraft 2 streams in 2010.
A 30-second interruption may not seem like much, but a little goes a long way in the streaming community. In the midst of a tense game of Fortnite, having an unavoidable screen-filling message pop up could be the difference between viewers catching an epic kill first-hand and turning them off completely out of frustration, potentially even sending them into the waiting arms of competing platforms. Meanwhile, a 30 second gap in a fighting game like Street Fighter V could end up blocking fans from viewing more than a third of an entire round.
In any case, the matter is certainly becoming problematic, and the backlash doesn't appear to be going away any time soon. With users, developers and now former staff members speaking out against it, it seems likely that Twitch will need to address the issue of the Purple Screen of Death soon, if not outright scrap the unwelcome interruption.