Emote reclassification, more emotes available to Tier 1 subscribers

On 11/22/2021, I noticed a notification from Twitch stating that they had given us more emote slots for Tier 1 subscribers, so I decided to reclassify my emotes so that Tier 1 subscribers would have access to more of those emotes when they subscriber (currently 4, with 1 more still & 1 animated I may add later).  The Ammo, SeriousBomb & Fleshpound emotes were moved to being accessible to Tier 1 Subscribers, while I moved the Raven emote back to being available to all tippers of 1,000 bits on the channel (currently including 3 other Fortnite streamers, or at least former-streamers of Fortnite).

Of course there would be a catch in doing this, where like many other things on Twitch have become broke (or previously gained perks being revoked), I found that once again I'm having to go through the initial acceptance period that Twitch imposes on newer affiliates (where I had gained approval to immediate acceptance of emotes over a year ago)...

Note also that the bit leader on the channel has the ability to request an emote resort (allowing access to emotes more to their liking in cheer slots that they have reached).  Unfortunately seeing as Twitch is now making me go through the acceptance process again when I attempt to resubmit emotes to have them resorted, this means that any time I have to do so, those emotes will become temporarily available until Twitch re-accepts the emotes (even if it was supposed to be a simple resort of existing emotes)...

CenturyLink speed changes, continued streaming pending streaming performance tests

Roughly the first week of November of 2021, I noticed that my upload rates seems slower when uploading gaming videos to YouTube, so I decided to run another speed test on 11/8/2021 & found that it appears my speeds have changed (download speeds increasing roughly 10 Mbps from where I should have been, the uploading rate running roughly 4 Mbps higher than what I was originally quoted when I switched back to CenturyLink from Comcast...but roughly half of what I had when they fixed my internet back in July).

While 3 Mbps was not high enough to continue streaming online multiplayer games (what I was getting back when I first switched back to CenturyLink), 7 Mbps might be enough to allow me to continue streaming the games I'd prefer to be streaming (although I was getting 10 Mbps upload when I was with Comcast).  I'll be running some tests when I get a chance to stream again to see if this increase in upload rate allows me to stream at 3000 Kbps (what I prefer to stream at); If not, I'll again be restricted in my streaming capability to only single player games until decent internet is available in my area (that doesn't feel like it costs an arm, leg & newborn child every month...).

 I'm still waiting on Google Fiber to be become available in my area, with any luck, maybe Biden's new budget plans will get these companies to start laying fiber optic cables for fiber internet plans once again (as they stated 4 or 5 years ago when I first moved here, later finding out that those plans were abandoned when CenturyLink changed their management company).

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).

Patreon account closure, "claimed" violation of ToS

As I was going over proofreading of the last post, I got an email from Patreon stating that they were closing my creator page under the claim of violation of ToS:

Note that certain details have been censored in this screenshot of the email

 

The expectation of this action is they were looking at what was being supplied directly over Patreon (the game giveaways) & not at the offsite content that the page was originally created for (namely, my Twitch channel).

Even though I was intending on doing a stream, this closure of my Patreon creator page (as well as the negation of funds & rewards that would have been assigned by account for funds that were donated to other creators on Patreon, an indirect penalty after the actions that were taking against my creator page, seeing as they were on the same account) sidetracked my plans to do that stream on Twitch & instead I spent over an hour writing & proofreading the response you see below before sending it to them:

Note that certain details have been censored in this screenshot of the email

In this response to Patreon, I stated that the benefits were better if subscribing to my Twitch channel through Patreon rather than directly through Twitch.  The reason for this was you got 1 channel point (via StreamElements) per cent spent on Patreon (while I was considering lowering this in response to transfer fees, I never did take this step), where you only got what was calculated as streamer revenue on Twitch (which was less than 50% of a Twitch subscription unless it was a Prime subscription, Prime subscriptions gave a flat rate of 250 points back for a tier 1 subscription; Twitch cheers still gave 1 points per bit cheered, there was no deduction here).  Additionally, if you were paying an additional $5 over what a subscription would cost on Twitch, you were allowed to request a gift subscription (from myself) to the channel (which gave more points back over subscribing directly to the channel over Twitch, seeing as gift subs gave a higher cut towards the streamer than a paid sub paid directly by the viewer).

With the termination of the creator page, the final month's perk of being able to request a gift sub is also negated, however points gained by those that were supporting the channel through Patreon will remain on those accounts (with no deductions or lowered rate prior to termination of the account).

Even though specific details were given regarding offsite perks in the response to their termination email, I doubt there will be any reversal in their decision, so all that will remain at this point will be the lower point rewards on direct subs to the channel (as well as tips through StreamElements once I get my account set up for them again, which will be lower points back than cheering directly on Twitch).

On the off-chance that Patreon does decide to backtrack their decision & choose to reinstate the account, I will be making changes that should have been done some time ago, that meaning that points back to subscribers over Patreon will be taking a cut to account for transfer & collection fees (points back to subscribers will still be higher than it would be for subscriptions directly on Twitch however...that is, if Patreon realizes they made a mistake in their decision & choose to reinstate the account, not that I expect they would with the response I sent them).

While the response to their team only details what was to be expected on my personal site, this blog & my channels, it did not detail other publications that I'm intending on publishing once the main articles are published to my personal site (with all evidence I can gather together regarding what has happened, as well as their part in supporting creators committing illegal activities & have yet to be held accountable for their actions...).  There are plenty of other sites that also allow reviews from the public (Google Maps, Google Play, the Better Business Bureau, the Federal Communications Commission, among others that may come later).  They have a choice at this point to look at the additional information that has been provided to them thus far & take another look at whether their actions were correct, otherwise their actions will be made a public matter to inform the public as such, which I can only expect a cover-up to hide these facts, which will only result in further publications in response to their actions, only to lead to what I can expect as building distrust of the Patreon platform, which will only lead to less income for them through those creators (as well as possibly an ultimate shutdown of the platform).

Remember Patreon is a platform that benefits by providing a funding platform for "creators", however in providing this platform, they also pull the reigns on who is considered a "creator" through restrictions they set, even if the termination of those that were following the rules are a misunderstanding on their part where they didn't have all the details.  Patreon only benefits through providing this platform by taking a small portion from the creators that choose to trust their platform & not to be taken advantage of or to be incorrectly penalized (remember my account did get incorrectly marked as adult-content back on 10/19/2019 & never did get corrected).  If people lose trust in Patron as a legitimate "creator" funding platform, that word is going to get around & any potential income that Patreon could be putting in their pocket will dry up.

Do I think this will be enough to push Patreon to the breaking point & force a shutdown?  No, not really...  It's clear the termination of my creator page was a hair-trigger decision where no additional research on offsite rewards was done prior to the decision being made (people can claim free games with those points, not that anybody has actually taken advantage of what's in my StreamElements shop yet) & much like big name gaming companies feel their decisions take priority over their customers when developing their games, I fully suspect that Patreon will continue terminating creator accounts, regardless of the reason for the decision may have originally been made & not looking back on their decisions, even in the case of litigation...

If the account does get reinstated, I will give an update at that point, but otherwise it should be expected that I will no longer be seeking to be doing any form of business through Patreon or anybody else who may be running through them...

UPDATE:

Video response to account termination:

 

Subscriber-only streaming revoked, negating streaming of certain games that would have been otherwise

In the midst of starting to stream again, I noticed that Twitch has revoked my ability to do subscriber-only streams.  While this problem doesn't mean much seeing as I haven't had a subscriber since September 7th of 2019, certain games (or modes) I am ONLY willing to stream if they are subscriber-only.  This includes PvP games where you can be stream-sniped & your stream can be used against you, as well as games that might give away personal information (such as Pokemon GO).  Because of this, games that fall under this category will not be getting streamed on Twitch until that option becomes available again.  While Discord streaming to a VIP channel might have been an option, considering this Discord function only seems to work correctly on Windows 10 (where I'm still running Windows 7 Ultimate), this also negates the possibility of streaming these games on Discord to a limited audience.  Additionally, I have had to stop streaming on Steam due to their lack of privacy options when it comes to game visibility on your profile (setting an option which hid game activity, which apparently also broke my ability to stream games on Steam).

Really the only option left at this point (at least with accounts I already have open) would be a private YouTube stream, however I'm still weary as to whether streaming to YouTube would be smart after they allowed the multiple attacks from Bandai/Namco back in 2016 (now expect this blog to also get attacked simply because I mentioned it, not that it really matters; the main purpose for the blog is a feed for the Twitch channel, so it don't really need to be public or listed in search engines as it links off of my channel).  Note that this particular reason is also why I STILL refuse to put my payment information on ANY Google-owned platform (at least until Google Fiber is available is my area, this might be the only thing that breaks this deadlock on refusal to put any money into Google's pockets), including Google Play, despite sticking primarily to Samsung Galaxy S-series smartphones & Android tablets.

Sometime after 9 PM on July 11th, I noticed that my internet had started to have issues, only giving me about half of the transfer rate I was supposed to be getting since my switch to CenturyLink (40 mbps download & 3 upload), which can be seen here:

After the call on the 11th, they said they were going to have somebody look at it, but I never got an update on this & attempted to contact them again for a followup on the 13th, to which I got 2 answers that didn't go anywhere (the first call not saying a thing after their picked up, the second call not saying anything until I started repeating "Hello?" to see if anybody was even there, they eventually asked for my name & account number, where after I gave them that information, they started claiming that they couldn't hear me speaking.

I tried again the following day (the 14th) in an attempt to get an update on what was going on, finally getting somebody who responded, it seems that a support ticket wasn't even opened on the first call I made on the 11th.  I did start messing with the cables attached to the back of my modem & did a few more power recycles to see if it was just a loose cable, I got it working again (at full speed), so I closed the work ticket & went to bed (spending more time that I should have trying to get this working & mitigating what online tasks I could get done while the connection was malfunctioning).  When I woke up however, I saw that the issue was back (this time on the other line to the modem), so I rescheduled the previous work order (luckily I still had the email with the confirm, reschedule & cancel links in it).

The technician came to work on the issue on the 15th, stating that the problem was simply a clasp that had disconnected itself from the connection, so all he had to do was reclasp it & my internet was working at full capacity again.

After the got it working again, I was discussing the transfer rates with him & prorated refunds for time that the internet was not working at full capacity.  He explained that I would get an automatic prorated refund based on when the support ticket was opened, but this would only be fore the time that the ticket was opened (this means I'd only be getting back to the 14th, the 11th to the 13th I'd get stiffed on).  I stated that I might have to call CenturyLink's billing to try & get back the rest of it (stating that I had speedtest & call logs regarding the matter I could probably use as evidence to get the rest of it).

Beyond that, he also was talking to me about the capabilities of what I should be able to get in transfer rates on my home (this coming after I was speaking to my neighbor about his outage with CenturyLink, a full outage for a couple days in his case, but he was getting a MUCH FASTER transfer rate).  The technician stated that I should be able to get a higher transfer rate & for testing sake, he increased my upload rate to test it's capabilities.  While he increased it to 20 mbps for this testing period (which he was intending on lowering back to what CenturyLink is claiming what should be available in my area, despite my neighbors being able to get 100 mbps upload & 40 upload), I was getting roughly 13 mbps when I ran a speedtest with the elevated speeds.

It appears for the time being, he's going to leave it at the higher transfer rate (at least until CenturyLink's system kicks it back to the mere 3 that was assigned to me when I switched back to them in 2018).  For this reason, I decided I wouldn't be seeking the addition credit to my account for the 3 days that isn't going to be prorated in the automatic refund as it's going to improve my ability to continue doing stuff online (at least as long as the increased upload rate remains for the 3 days that did not count due to their not creating a support ticket during the original conversation on the 11th).

Note that I have not been streaming to Twitch since the switch to CenturyLink & the initial tests that made it clear I could not continue streaming online multiplayer games with only 3 mbps upload rate, only leaving the possibility for single player games that didn't rely on internet bandwidth for decent functionality.  However provided this upload rate sticks for a while, I may be able to go back to streaming to Twitch until it's lowered again (at that point we're back to the waiting game of waiting for either CenturyLink to wire the neighborhood with fiber and ultimately until Google Fiber becomes available in my area, which is probably the only thing that is going to end my boycott that is keeping me from putting my payment information on any Google service after YouTube allowed Bandai/Namco to go after my YouTube channel simply because of a link that went to a review of one of their games on my personal site that they didn't agree with).

Long story short, those that are following the channel can expect some more streams to Twitch (at least until the upload rate is lowered again), so it's a pleasant change after 4 days of hell of not being able to do half of what I've been attempting to get done, we'll just have to see how long it lasts before I have to stop streaming again...

YouTube video corruption

I started noticing that videos uploaded to YouTube starting on 6/7/2021 were getting corrupted after YouTube finished processing those videos (while being unable to stream online multiplayer games to Twitch until I have decent internet again, I have still been recording gameplay for upload to YouTube when I run into something I feel is worth preserving).  I wasted a couple days trying to get this resolved on their site (limiting my game time as a result, even more so than the health issues that started limiting my gameplay back when I was still streaming to Twitch), reprocessing & reuploading multiple times to try & fix the end result, unfortunately there was always corruption on their end despite my best efforts to try and get a different result.

On 6/8/2021, I decided to take a different route in providing an uncorrupted version of these videos, this came through providing the original videos (prior to being uploaded to YouTube) on my personal site, allowing downloading of them & providing links to those downloads in each description (as well as creating a playlist to remind me of which videos I would need to fix later once determined that the corruption issue had been fixed on their end).

I'm also considering finding another site to upload them to that won't be affected by the corruption issue, I may start uploading those videos there as streaming alternatives to downloading uncorrupted versions if this issue takes too long to be corrected...

PS3/VITA cutoff backtracked

After further looking into this issue, it appears that PlayStation decided to backtrack on their decision to cut off full functionality of PS3/VITA options over PSN:
https://blog.playstation.com/2021/04/19/playstation-store-on-ps3-and-ps-vita-will-continue-operations

Of course these functions still have been cut off in the mobile app, as well as their online store (accessible through web browsers), meaning the only access to PlayStation 3 & VITA titles are through their own stores (meaning their own devices) & remote installation is no longer an option (nor is wishlisting of those title, which I used to keep track of what I still wanted to purchase at a later date, particularly when one of those games/DLC went on sale, apparently no longer an important concern considering I haven't seen a sale on PS3 titles in over a year & a half, but this also means I am likely to forget about what I still wanted to purchase if I wasn't ready to do so when I found them).

This means that I am also pulling back on my own cutoffs, not entirely, but at least to some degree.  Considering the mobile apps & site still have removed most PS3 functionality (with the exception of trophies, the only remaining remnants of PS3 & VITA games), I will still be removing PSN friends that haven't logged into the PS3 in over a year (with the limited exceptions stated before; roughly two-thirds of my PSN friend list has already been wiped because of this, with more expected to be removed in the coming months, as those users are close to a year according to PS3 login dates).  In regards to associating my PSN account with other accounts, I believe I will leave this removed for the time being; if I do decide to re-associate my PSN account with other online accounts in the future, incoming friend invites on my PSN account will remain disabled (seeing as I was only receiving friend invites for people that were using a PS4 or higher, which I was not accepting after looking at the trophies on their profiles).

What will continue is I'll still be willing to purchase PS3 titles over the PSN store, as well as DLC for games I already own (or may acquire in the future, provided the PSN store still remains functional on the PS3), this may open up more options for games to stream on Twitch (provided I can get my Elgato Game Capture HD to work again with Twitch servers, the Elgato developers unfortunatley unable to fix this for over a year & not responding to inquiries about it).  At this point a boycott against Sony products is an afterthought & unlikely to happen (unless the PSN store becomes inaccessible on the PS3 in the future, it's already having EXTREMELY noticeable latency problems).

Since the announcement of the PS3 cutoff, I also have been marking anything re-released on Steam as ignored; I will be going back on that decision to remove those games that were ignored if that was the only stipulation in that decision, however most of those games also had a Windows 10 requirement, those games will still remain on the ignore list as I still have not bit the bullet & decided to upgrade to Windows 10 yet...

Additionally, there was a detail on my Steam profile where I stated I did not recommend purchasing from Sony anymore, referencing this cutoff (which at this point has been backtracked after seeing the backlash they got as a result of their plans to do so); I will be removing those notes, however I still have not determined whether I will be re-adding those links to Sony products on my hardware specifications on my Steam profile (I may if I can still find store pages for them, but I don't intend on spending an extensive amount of time trying to find pages to purchase them from either).

Further PSN cutoffs

In addition to removing my PSN account from my Epic Games account last night, I've taken further steps to cut off PSN, this one related to other PSN users that aren't still using a PS3.

Roughly 4 days ago, I disabled receiving new friend requests on my primary PSN account.  This is because most friend requests I have been receiving do not have gaming history below PS4 or have no gaming history at all (normally meaning a new account for trolling/harassment purposes).  I may still be willing to add more PS3 friends in the future, but I didn't see a point in allowing additional incoming friend requests when they were people that I couldn't play with on that system or simply people trying to cause problems, so this will cut off people that are simply using PSN as an outlet to be abusive.

The second thing is I'm going to start pruning PSN friends that haven't been online in over a year.  Note that I'm going to be going by my PS3 friends list (not by what's on the site or the mobile app, as these have cut off PS3 support), meaning anybody who has not logged into a PS3 in over a year will be removed.  Of course there may be some exceptions, but for the most part, anybody listed as not being online in over a year when looking at my PS3 friend list will be removed.

Additional cutoffs are to be expected when it comes to the Sony brand name in the future.  A full boycott against Sony is still being considered, but as of yet, still not determined to be a step taken, but it's still a high probability in the near to distant future...

PSN cutoff, family/health issues limiting online activity

For those who have a PlayStation 3, you may have noticed that your system may not be able to stay connected to the PSN network.  In my case, I start up the system, it disconnects in under a minute & the only way to get it to reconnect again is to restart the system, which only repeats the same issue.

Because of this issue, I will be removing my PSN username from accounts that are associated with it as a means of cutting off those that still have access to it, this decision made in response to Sony's choice to ignore the complaints about this particular issue.  I also intend on publishing a boycott to my personal site in the near future if PSN continues to remain unstable as it currently is on this system.  With the way that PSN works when it comes to crossplay, removing this association should sever my getting thrown into games with PS4 players (those that play on PC, we can still play together, but I will no longer be supporting PSN if they can't keep their networks working, nor will I be putting any more money towards their products or franchises) & hopefully cut off a lot of the griefers from those systems as well.  As an addition step, I will be removing all links on my system specs on this blog, my Twitch channel & my Steam profile to show that I no longer recommend continued support through being a customer of this company (along with a note on those profiles that states specifically this).

On a further note, those who have been supporting the channel may have noticed I haven't been listing free games lately (this really only affects those subscribing at $5 or more on Patreon currently, there hasn't been a Twitch sub to my channel since July of 2019, one of the reasons why I had to make cuts to my internet service & stop streaming online multiplayer games, I wasn't making anything through Twitch to be able to afford it's continuation).  The reason for this has been a number of reasons, the first one a lot of people are already aware of, it's due to health issues I've been having myself (excessive bleeding leading to anemia, which is lack of energy & a lot of pain when sitting for long periods of time).

The second reason is a family matter, my mother has recently been diagnosed with cancer & we're working out the details about what treatments she'll be taking to deal with the disease (currently determined to be daily radiation treatments as it was caught earlier, doesn't look like chemo is going to be on the table, but we don't know that for certain yet).  As if the corona situation wasn't a bad enough plague to the world, our family is now dealing with a life threatening disease that is guaranteed to kill if left unchecked (covid seems to have less of an effect on those that are more healthy, it's possible to survive it without having to have treatments for it, but I still wouldn't suggest getting around others if you even think you might have it).

Obviously the days of my streaming as they were (being able to stream whatever I want) are over, at least until an ISP becomes available in my area that isn't going to have a monthly cost of a newborn child every month (figuratively speaking, but that's what it feels like when you can't afford it)...  Currently I am waiting for Google Fiber to become available in my area, which I can't say I expect will be coming any time soon as even CenturyLink still has not followed through with their statement from over 3 years ago that they were going to be putting in fiber in the neighborhood...  I do intend on going back to streaming normally when it becomes an option again, however paying the exorbitant prices that Comcast (i.e. Xfinity) is expecting (currently the only ISP in the neighborhood that provides a fast enough upload rate for streaming & playing online games consecutively) is not an option when I don't have the income to cover those costs...