Dauntless streams on hold due to bug

After the last update with Dauntless, I realized that I wasn't getting awarded coins when completing weeklies & even if I do get the coins later, this is still restricting my ability to purchase limited items (like aethersparks, merits & keys), which reset each week/day (depending on the item, point being that considering I'm only getting coins on dailies, I'm not gaining enough to be able to purchase those items each week, aethersparks always being the highest priority each week).

Because of this new bug in Dauntless, I will be limiting my gameplay in Dauntless until resolved, which means there won't be enough time playing the game to make it worth streaming it on Twitch.  On the other hand, videos will still be recorded & could still show up on YouTube if I have something worthy of the time it takes to process & upload the video (usually taking around a few hours per video).  Streaming of Dauntless should continue on my Twitch channel once this bug has been fixed (as well as once my health has improved enough to allow me to stream over an extended time again, one of the reasons streams have been extremely limited over the past couple months).

UPDATE:  Interestingly enough, it seems that almost as soon as I started bringing up this issue on their official Discord server (including mentioning the notices I have made that I was putting Dauntless streams on hold until this issue was resolved, as if my Discord status wasn't enough indication of that), they hotfixed the issue mid-session (without needing another patch to fix it).  For the most part this issue appears to be fixed, but as of yet, there are still a few that appear to be bugged & not completable (at least as far as I could tell), one in particular being the completion of dailies counting towards a weekly.

At the very least, weeklies are now awarding coins as they should be (at least those that can be completed), so Dauntless streams are back on when I have the health to run them, however I do have a lot of life issues that I've been dealing with over the past couple months, I probably won't have a lot of time to stream until mid-November (hopefully before then, although they might be limited until later).

Twitch restrictions increased on channel

Due to the obscene amount of "buy viewers" bots & abusive users on Twitch, decided to increase the restrictions beyond just email verification.  This now includes a phone number verification for new chatters, but with a minimal restriction (seeing as bots typically follow & are gone in a split second, they'll never get past this...unless they were actually stupid enough to add a phone number to their accounts).  The account age restriction should block the people creating new accounts just to be abusive in chat.

Anybody who has chatted on the channel in the past (and hasn't been banned) should be exempt from needing a verified phone number on their Twitch account, otherwise they can just wait 10 minutes after following to chat if they don't have a verified phone number.  The account age bypass may be adjusted or removed if it bypasses independently rather than in addition to following.

Restrictions will be adjusted as necessary, but I don't expect I'll have to go much farther than this.

 

Twitch breach of information

On October 7th, I received an email from Twitch stating that all stream keys had been reset on Twitch (being that I use older software that requires manual entry of the key on my PC, this was an important email for me, although I have yet to update it in my old beta version of OBS):

While at the time I was unaware that there had been a breach of information on Twitch (the email not specifically mentioning this), I suspected as much to be receiving an email like this.

The next day (October 8th) I got an email from Norton regarding the attack on Twitch, a web version of this email can be found here.  This email made me aware of the situation & after reading futher details about it on The Verge, I realized that this could not only be the reason why certain functions are getting broken on Twitch, additional steps are likely necessary by creators to secure your account, as well as protect your identity from being stolen...

While I suspect people using 2-step authentication on their accounts are probably safe (with perhaps the exception of using a mobile authenticator, seeing as it might be possible the hackers managed to pull restoration keys to access your account), email & SMS/text secondary authorization methods should still remain secure.  Changing your password might be a smart move if you are not using texting or email 2-step login protection.

The bigger problem is the theft of personal information, which might make sense to protect your identity with an extra layer of protection (like with credit monitoring or through LifeLock).  I personally use the authenticator on my main account, so I expect I will be at least changing my password, if not changing the 2-step authentication method (seeing as I have Norton Dark Web Scanning for my personal information, I'll get a notification if that password gets listed, at which point I'll know it's necessary to change the authentication method beyond the password).

Stay safe out there streamers, do what is necessary to secure your accounts & identities against the technically-advance criminal enterprise that attacked not only Twitch, but every user on their site.

Email notifications now broken as well...

Another thing I've noticed is that email notifications appear to have stopped, so I no longer get notified of channels going live, which limits the amount of hosts I've been able to throw out due to lack of intended functionality (unless this was intended to be broken).  Statements from other streamers I have on my frequent host list would indicate that they are affected by this same issue & this issue would appear to be global (as with which was later to determined with the hosting and auto-hosting issues, as well as listing of hosted channels on their website).

While this appears to be no longer functional through email (my main form of notifications on live streams on Twitch), I have found that notifications still work through my browser (if I have it running & am at my computer when a channel starts streaming).

These notifications have displayed a problem for some time with multiple notification throughout a stream (the longer a stream ran, the more notifications you would receive).  It's possible these could have been disabled to battle this problem, however the same issue also affects other forms of notifications (mobile app & browser notifications) so disabling the email notifications just cut off those that relied on them, it didn't solve anything...

In addition to the lack of email notifications, this is also cutting off the time I watch, host, lurk or subscribe to other channels because I simply don't know they are running unless I am already on Twitch (unless I'm using my browser as the time & don't have those notifications muted, as I have them muted while playing, recording or streaming other games myself).  I do check every so often to see if anybody is streaming, but I've noticed that I am not getting full use of my Amazon Prime sub as often as I could due to broken auto-hosting, hosting & notifications on Twitch..

Further hosting functions broken

As I continued to mess with it, I found that there were additional functions broken with Twitch hosting, not only with auto-hosting, but also with manual hosts.  What I found was that in addition to auto-hosting not working, manual hosts also were not showing on the website.  I did however manage to find out that hosts were still being listed over mobile & Shield apps (Google Play).  It's possible that host listings might still be working on the PC client, but I haven't used this in several months (only using it for a short period to test whether it got past certain buffering issues when I was using my primary browser to get other things done while watching/listening to a stream on Twitch, removing it when I realized that the PC client shared modules with my primary brower & still buffered when using Firefox, resorting to Microsoft Edge to double-lurk channels when I still needed to get something done in Firefox).  So while manual hosts may seem pointless if you use Twitch primarily through a PC browser, it still has some use if you have followers that may use a mobile/media player (such as the nVidia Shield/Shield TV) app.

Other Twitch function cutoffs

In addition to the cutoff of being able to stream as subscriber-only (as well as marking VODs as subscriber only) I've found that other functions on my account are also getting disabled (and not functions that are affiliate specific).  2 more options I noticed to have been disabled as early as 8/29/2021 include stream summary emails from Twitch (after completion of a steam, still receiving these from StreamElements however) & auto-hosting (these appear to no longer be kicking in; I've double-checked to make sure it's been turned on, as well as making sure that channels I believed should be getting auto-hosted when they are live are still only my list).

It's pretty clear something is happening here that Twitch is neglecting to inform me of in regards to my channel & I fully expect this is a result of falsified reports...  In the mean time, there's little I can d about it myself to get it resolved when I am being given the run around other than making publications on my channel & blog so people are aware that it's not my doing that they may appear to have been gotten cut off from my constant support of their channels (despite my ability to be able to continue streaming)...

Fortnite once again broken, Save the World streams dead until fixed

The update to Fortnite on 8/17/2021 once again broken launching of the game, similar to an issue back in 2017.  Because of this, Save the World streams are dead on my channel until Epic Games can get this issue resolved (I'll be publishing a video of this issue later, as I have done in the past).

In addition to Save the World streams dying on my channel due to my inability to even start the game, I'll also be holding off any other purchases of games over the Epic Games launcher, any games where Epic Games is the developer/publish of that game or any other games that were developed using the Unreal Engine until resolved.

As with the last time Epic Games busted something so I couldn't run it, I've also disabled auto-hosting on my channel until the issue can be resolved.  The reason for this is most of the people that stream on my auto-host list are people that stream games from the Epic Games launcher, as well as games that tend to get auto-hosted usually are developed using the Unreal Engine.  When I see a game that is being streamed that I want to host, I will first research it to make sure the game is not developed/published by Epic Games, not on the Epic Games launcher & not developed using the Unreal Engine before I give a manual host to those channels.

Note that my channel has become primarily a Dauntless channel since the degradation of Fortnite.  While I do not intend on stopping those streams, I do intend on removing supporting information from the Now Playing section of my channel (and this blog) that could lead to money going into the game until I see launching of Fortnite has been fixed...

UPDATE:  At the beginning of my 8/17/2021 Dauntless stream (finding something else to stream because I can't even get Fortnite running), I opened with what was happening when I started Fortnite, repeating this crash 3 times before switching to Dauntless to show it wasn't a fluke:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1121778371

Note that embedding from Twitch has been busted for a few years, I have not been able to embed anything from their site since they changed their API.  The embedded version is from YouTube (a lower quality export from Twtich), but at least allows viewing from other sites without having to go to the site itself ot allow viewing (viewing on Twitch is still recommended if you want the higher quality version or are having trouble reading text in the YouTube version).

The Twitch version of this video was later shared in the bug report filed on the official Fortnite Discord server, editing in the link seeing as the report had been filed with a screenshot prior to this stream even starting.

As of yet, still no fix to the issue, only confirmation I have gotten is that there are a lot of upvotes on the bug report on their Discord server (last I checked, 9 up, 0 down, including my own upvote, not including the initial votes that are added after a bug report is filed), so it seems there may be others that are also running into this same issue.

Free games listings for subscribers pulled

While my last update stated that I was adding additional benefits to the channel, I've realized that the termination of the Patreon page was likely a targeted attack on my channel & therefore am also pulling one of the benefits from the channel, this being the same one that I expect was used as a basis to get Patreon to terminate my account.  I find it highly unlikely that my Patreon page would get terminated only days after I started streaming again & I can think of at least 3 individuals that have aggressively attacked my channel in the past (these 3 really only being the tip of the iceberg, there were many others that have been banned from my channel in the past for smaller attacks) & because it appears the game giveaway listings were the basis on this possible attack, that benefit is getting pulled until I can get to the bottom of it (which in all honestly, I doubt I will be able to get to the bottom of, seeing as Patreon is taking the "block & ignore" approach to the situation after this case of creator victimization, which if my assumption is accurate, upgrades the situation to a matter of revictimization).

2 of the individuals I believe could have been capable of this were also Twitch streamers (their channels kind of dead as of late, but still Twitch streamers that had Partnership status...which I find ironic that individuals with that type of disposition are rewarded for bad behavior...) when their organized attacks against my channel started (one of those I have a recording from their own channel where they are organizing one of these attacks with friends over his Discord & viewers in his Twitch stream, making false reports against my YouTube channel after they found it, first taking time to search it out while still live on his own channel), the 3rd individual not expected to have the brainpower for this (a young & very childish individual) that has only managed to get himself banned over multiple Twitch accounts in many of the channels that I was supporting with hosts (and that also supported me as a streamer; that individual literally following through the hosts on my channel to attack me by name with false information in those channels for years & I have IRC logs to back up that statement over many of those known attacks, known meaning there are probably many others I'm not even aware of; at least 6 Twitch accounts that I know of were banned from other channels in attacks through this same manner, as well as a few failed attacks on my own Discord that were mostly foiled by the locks I have in place to prevent such attacks on it, resulting in bans on each of those accounts from my own Discord & eventually managing to get himself banned from the Official Fortnite Discord after I brought these attacks & the logged history of those attacks to the attention of one of their moderators).

In any case, I may bring this benefit back if I ever get to the bottom of who was behind it (already expect I know who it was, but currently unable to prove it, not that his nature of gloating, along with his friends being too verbal for their own good will eventually get that out in the open, at which point I'll be taking him to court for damages cause by slander, or at least whoever was responsible once I figure out who it was), being highly unlike that Patreon is going to reverse their decision on the matter given their reactions on Facebook against my own Facebook account, as well as their refusal to respond to  email responses sent to them over the support ticket opened when they emailed the account closure notice, but this benefit could also be brought back if Patreon has a change of heart (although my opinion of Patreon at this point is they have a heart of ice, not expecting that to thaw out any time soon).

Request-based StreamElements store purchases

In response to Patreon's termination of my creator page & the expected discontinuation of streams to my Twitch channel (when cuts on expenses need to be made again due to the cutoff from Patreon funding), I am offering another option to purchasing from the StreamElements store with points gained by supporting (or simply viewing/lurking) the channel.

Originally, I had the StreamElements store set to only allow purchases from it when a stream was running (this was to help mitigate possible abuse of the one-time follower bonus).  However if live streams end due to lack of funds to be able to afford internet service with a high enough rate to even be able to stream single player games, that option won't be available anymore & all points gained will go to waste...

For this reason, I am now allowing a request-based purchase option where people can contact me in order to purchase from the store on request.  These requests can be done over Twitch (if I am following you or have you on my friend list, otherwise a whisper over Twitch will be blocked) or over Discord (you can get my contact by simply joining my Discord, however in order to be able to interact with the channels on the Discord server, you will first need to verify who you are, as it's locked up pretty tight to prevent attacks on it, which has already been proven to be the right decision on past attacks that didn't affect the server when they happened, only directly through DMs until they were blocked & reported).  On request, I'll simply deduct the points from your total & provide the activation key via private message over the form of contact made to make the request.

NOTICE:  Some of these keys are pretty old & it's possible they may have expired.  In the event that something like this happens, I provide a guarantee of refunding the points spent on the key should the key not be functional.  Unfortunately we're both out on the game if a key has expired, but I'm not going to hold a viewer responsible for this if they were committed enough to the channel to have the points to purchase one of these keys, they will get back what was spent in full should this ever be an issue.

Updates to channel bonuses:

I have finished setting back up the tipping system on StreamElements to allow for another means of supporting the channel (if you don't want to pay for cheers directly through the channel or want to be able to support it while not streaming).  Note however the return in points is a lot higher through cheers directly on Twitch (literally 1 point per bit cheered, there is no fee deduction being taken into account here), so it's better to cheer directly through Twitch if you have the option to do so (I just suggest that you don't do this through mobile apps, the costs are usually higher as those mobile apps provide a cut towards the app platforms, which usually gets included in the cost to obtain them).

Unfortunately with the cutoff from Patreon, subscriptions can only be done on Twitch itself (and the return in points is usually less than half of that of the cost of the subscription; points gained from a subscription are based on calculated revenue towards a payout by Twitch).  However subs are necessary if we want to unlock more emotes on the channel (even without subs, there are still cheer emotes that will still be available to those that have reached that amount in cheering, even if they aren't subscribing when they want to use them), so I'm going to set up an incentive for subscriptions on Twitch to reward those that may get us over the threshold for more emotes on the channel.  This new incentive will be that if we reach the unlock point on subscriptions for a new emote, I will give an additional 300 points to all active subs at the time a new emote slot is unlocked (this bonus would actually give more points back than spent on the sub once combined with the standard sub bonus).  Of course 300 points would only cover a tier 1 sub, higher tiers would give a larger bonus upon emote unlock, but considering I haven't received any subs higher than a Prime sub (which is a flat rate of 250 points return on sub, these are always higher than a paid sub), I have nothing to compare it to to calculate how much the bonus would be (should I have a value in the future, I will determine how much that bonus will be).

Patreon makes it clear, account termination is final

When I woke up on 7/22/2021, I checked some of my previous posts regarding the Patreon account termination & found that Patreon decided to take counter-measures against them on Facebook, this came in the result of not only deletion of the comments, but also a BLOCK on my account to comment on their page.  I already expected comment deletions, this is why I kept backups (all except the comments regarding the video response of their actions).  The posts I had backed up to this point were as you can see here:

While I expected I would need to create a testing account on Facebook to verify the deletion of the comments (noticing that I couldn't see any other comments on that post either while logged into my account), I attempted to do so through a Firefox private browser (the same method I use for embedding Twitch chat into my videos, since Twitch discontinued functionality in Internet Explorer), which verified that it wasn't a full wipe of comments on the post, but my comments directly (with what appeared 2 other posts from other individuals were also deleted or outright blocked, as the post count was at 3 posts before I made my comment, which means 2 others were not showing):

It wasn't until I looked at the mobile app on my phone that I realized they had also blocked my ability to react to their post on Facebook, so pretty much a full block (at least as far as business pages are capable of on Facebook):

This is the first time EVER I have seen a business page (of course I can't really consider Patreon as a business anymore, so I'm using this term extremely loosely at this point) do something like this.  It made one thing BLATENTLY clear however, they had no intention in backtracking on their decision to terminate the account, so I was going to have to go through with what I stated in that response to their email, as well as many other publications that was posted prior; it was time to start publishing Patreon reviews & boycotts to my personal site...

Of course to truly verify that this was a block (and not just disabling those options for everyone), I would have to create a new testing account on Facebook to verify the removal of the comment & reaction functions were indeed only affecting my account, something I didn't feel like it was worth the effort to get done, at least not until the new publications were up on my personal site.  Clearly I have no intentions in sharing anything of theirs anywhere on the web (unless it were to mock them, which I'm not going to lower myself to that level of childishness, stating the facts is enough to get the word out without having to be immature about it), so with the lack of functionality on the page in it's current state (even if it is assigned by account), I decided it was time to add this business page to my business block list:

One other thing of note is that the reviews that were previously mentioned in the video embedded in the past post to this blog (the response to Patreon over their decision to terminate the account), I still have the ability to delete or revise those reviews myself (even the BBB review once published), but I fully expect rather than Patreon attempting to correct this issue, they will instead look to retaliate through forced removals & account penalizations (of course this will result in further publications to my personal site when they happen).  While it's clear they are not going to reverse their decision by their actions on Facebook, if I see they do make amends for their mistake, the boycotts can be removed, however reviews to my personal site NEVER get removed, only updated if something in that situation changes (which would explain why trying to print some of them would result in over 50 pages being printed on a single review, which doesn't say much as videos can't be printed to paper, only their digital representation, not the content in the video itself).

UPDATE:  I made one final attempt to see if they had anything to say about this & whether any attempt has been made to reconsider their actions, this came in the form of a final email on the same support ticket they opened when they terminated the account:

UPDATE:  Additional contacts were made to individuals that created an account specifically for the purpose of supporting my channel through Patreon (luckily I had 3 forms of contact outside of Patreon for the one individual I know did this), informing them of what had happened & that if they weren't supporting any other individuals on that platform, they might as well deactivate their account (better than giving Patreon the chance to abuse the payment information that is still on there, not that I expect deletion of those accounts would fully remove it; publications of hacking of sites with payment information would prove that even information on deleted accounts could still be compromised if still in the site's logs).