Artifact Twitch Raids

Overview

Artifact Twitch Raids refers to the ongoing prank raids of Twitch streams for the Valve game Artifact. After it was reported that literally zero people were watching streams of the game on Twitch, Twitch users began posting different, unrelated videos under the Artifact tag. These videos ranged from memes to pirated media and footage of the Christchurch Shooting.

Background

On April 8th, 2019, it was reported that Artifact, which was never a very popular game on Twitch,^[1] officially had zero streams dedicated to the game. Twitter user @AdmiralBulldog^[2] tweeted a screenshot of Artifact's presence on Twitch that day, showing zero streams (shown below).

Developments

On May 17th, it was reported again that Artifact had zero hours watched.^[3] That day, streamer NymN was checking in on the state of Artifact on Twitch, which he'd done before, and found a stream of a picture trolling him while a distorted remix of the Yoshi's Island theme played (shown below).

Upon another check in on Artifact three days later, NymN discovered several meme streams in the Artifact tag, one of which showed a clip of his previous check in zoomed in on his forehead (shown below).

This began a trend of random media being added under the Artifact tag on Twitch. On May 22nd, when Artifact reached seven hours watched on the platform, and on the 23rd, it reached 356 hours watched.^[3] On May 25th, Twitter user @surny_^[4] posted a screenshot of the Twitch page for Artifact, which featured multiple streams of the Ayaya meme.

On May 27th, 2019, Vice^[5] reported that streams under the Artifact tag had grown less humorous and that streams of pornography, Game of Thrones episodes, Harry Potter films, and footage of the Christchurch Shootings had been uploaded. As of May 28th, the tag features mostly skits and memes.^[6]

Twitch Lawsuit

On June 15th, 2019, Bloomberg^[7] reported that Twitch was looking to sue the users who had streamed pirated content under the Artifact tag. However, Twitch does not know who the users are, and they are listed in the lawsuit as "John and Jane Does 1-100.” Twitch is requesting that all the anonymous defendants, if identified, be legally barred from the platform. Twitch is also looking for a reward of “restitution and damages, including, but not limited to, enhanced, liquidated, compensatory, special, statutory and punitive damages, and all other damages permitted by law.” Twitch had to stop all new accounts from streaming for two days as they fought the spam.

Search Interest

External References