Internet problems again; further streams on hold...

While I was intending on doing a Dauntless stream later today, I've found that my internet with CenturyLink is again having issues & my upload rate currently is not high enough to run a stream of online multiplayer games (single player games perhaps still being an option).  I did attempt to schedule a repair call with a technician over their online chat, but the chat representative was unwilling to schedule the call & stated that I needed to contact my router's manufacturer (which isn't going to fix anything).  There's also a high probability that even if the technician does come out to fix it, my upload rate is going to be back to a mere 3 mbps, which means I won't be able to stream online games anymore anyways (not until CenturyLink offers a higher upload rate or I ultimately decide to switch back to Xfinity, the latter I've been attempting to avoid after what they pulled with me in 2018).  I've been waiting for Google Fiber to become available in my area to get a decent internet connect at a decent price, but this still remains unavailable in my neighborhood since I moved here in 2016...

So while I was considering a stream today, no stream will be possible while my internet connection is malfunctioning (even if I do get a service call scheduled, it's unlikely it will be fixed while I still have energy to work on the last day of Dauntless before the new season).  I'll be making a call to CenturyLink later today to try & set up a service call to have somebody come & look at the line, but if I can't get anywhere because they would rather put responsibility on my router for the problem (which is only a factor because my CenturyLink modem is in bridge mode, which was necessary because I wasn't able to update my personal site if it wasn't), I will need to make calls to start switching back to Xfinity at the end of this month.

On the plus side, if I do switch back to Xfinity, I should have the upload rate to be able to start streaming regularly again (this is provided I have the health to continue doing so, which hasn't been the case for the last few months).  The bigger issue is I may not have the funds to continue paying that bill once I have to start paying my medical insurance's premiums again (especially after what Patreon pulled with terminating my account), so currently we're just going to have to see where the future of my channel goes based on available ISP services, whether they are functioning correctly, how much they are going to cost if I switch again & whether I can afford those costs (not to mention the continuing health issues I haven't been able to get taken care of due to COVID sucking up hospital resources & preventing me from getting the surgery done that I've been trying to get taken care of for over 2 years)...

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..