Twitch Purple Screen of Death Reportedly Ruining Game Embeds
By PUBG Invitational Annoyingly Marred by Anti-Adblock Screen
The Twitch Purple Screen of Death has proved to be an annoyance for streamers and viewers alike, but now it’s reportedly had an impact on the PUBG Invitational tournament for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
As with many such tournaments, the PUBG Invitational embeds a stream of the tournament into the game client. This PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds tournament opted to use Twitch for an in-game embed, but the dreaded “Purple Screen of Death” has is popping up and breaking up the action.
“Twitch’s purple screen of death is now messing up stream embeds directly inside video games, as seen here in the PUBG client for the PUBG Global Invitational,” Esports consultant Rod “Slasher” Breslau said on Twitter. “[Probably] not great for the user experience!”
“Twitch now ruining the watch experience on MultiTwitch, TeamLiquid, HLTV, Juked, Saltybet, Popdog, charity websites like Tiltify, individual streamer platforms, and the home screens of popular esports games so that they can make a little more ad money,” Breslau added.
Twitch Purple Screen of Death ‘Hurts Streamers,’ Founding Team Member Says
The Twitch Purple Screen of Death started making an appearance a couple of months ago. This screen will pop up as an anti-adblock measure, and it’s obviously not been well-received — one of the company’s founding team members spoke out against it late last month.
“Many of you may have seen this screen months ago as an anti-adblock message,” ex-Twitch team member Ben Goldhaber explained on Twitter. “However, it has evolved far beyond an anti-adblock measure – the PSoD impacts all Twitch embeds, everywhere, regardless of where you are viewing them and regardless if you use adblock.”
"This *completely* ruins the experience and makes embeds a vastly inferior way to engage with streams." – ex-Twitch team member Ben GoldhaberBen Goldhaber served as the Senior Manager of Partnerships, Leagues, & Events for Twitch from 2011–2014. After that, he transitioned to Director of Content Marketing from February 2014–June 2018; he also worked as the Gaming Outreach Manager for Twitch predecessor Justin.tv from February 2011–June 2011 according to his LinkedIn page.
“The [Twitch Purple Screen of Death] would be disruptive if it only showed up for the first 30 seconds,” Goldhaber continued. “But it pops up every 15 minutes… and can override a big team fight or hype moment.”
There’s no clear solution for this problem going forward; the Adblock subreddit, for example, notes that there seems to be a back-and-forth battle of adblockers getting around the PSoD and Twitch changing things up to prevent Adblock from working. Several users, however, have reported no problems with the PSoD whatsoever after installing certain adblockers — it appears to be very inconsistent.
The Twitch Purple Screen of Death might be annoying enough for streamers or viewers, but impacting an in-game embed during a major PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds tournament seems like a pretty silly oversight.
