Following the events that took place at the US Capitol and the tweets and statements made by the person behind the image, Twitch has decided to delete the popular ‘PogChamp’ emote. Twitch did promise to design a new emote, in collaboration with the community, to replace PogChamp.
Twitch explained their reasoning for deleting the emote on Twitter. “We’ve made the decision to remove the PogChamp emote following statements from the face of the emote encouraging further violence after what took place in the Capitol today. We want the sentiment and use of Pog to live on – its meaning is much bigger than the person depicted or the image itself – and it has a big place in Twitch culture. However, we can’t in good conscience continue to enable use of the image.”
We want the sentiment and use of Pog to live on – its meaning is much bigger than the person depicted or image itself– and it has a big place in Twitch culture. However, we can’t in good conscience continue to enable use of the image.
— Twitch (@Twitch) January 7, 2021
The person behind the PogChamp emote is Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez, a professional Street Fighter player. Controversy arose surrounding some of his tweets dealing with the storming of the US Capitol and the results of the past election. Twitch wishes to distance themselves from Gootecks, leading to them deleting the emote depicting his face from the platform.
Over the years the PogChamp emote became a huge part of Twitch culture, often used to symbolize moments of excitement during live streams. The emote itself would often be shortened to ‘pog’ or ‘poggers’ with variations made by the streamers themselves. Some people in the Twitch community already started pushing ‘KomodoHype’ as a possible replacement.
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