EPTThat is exactly what I had to deal with last night during the WCS NA qualifiers. My favorite Sc2 player, Avilo, was playing in the qualifier, and he was of course streaming his games. He set a 5 minute delay because he really didn't want anybody to stream-cheat him during the qualifiers.
Avilo took out his first two opponents, advancing through ro69 and ro32. Then in the ro16 he was to face QXC. BasetradeTV decided to cast his games between QXC. It's always really exciting when someone else casts a game by your favorite player. Unfortunately, however, BasetradeTV only had a delay of 3 minutes, as opposed to Avilo's 5 minute delay. This meant that you really couldn't watch both streams simultaneously via multitwitch, which is what I usually like to do in this situation. I decided to watch the game through Avilo's stream because I enjoy watching his first-person view while he plays. I usually do this even when watching replays of him.
So Avilo and QXC get into the game, stuff happens, the game is going along, and then someone types "gg map" into chat. Then someone else types it as well, and suddenly it seems like everyone is typing "gg map" in chat. It quickly became apparent that Avilo had lost the game and typed "gg map" to qxc (he doesn't like the current maps). Yet it didn't look like he had lost the game. We had just had the last two minutes of his game spoiled for us! GRRRR!!!
You know, I gotta say, I never quite realized until now how truly awful it is to be spoiled. It's the absolute WORST. It really sucked for Avilo's fans, who'd been watching the game through his stream, to have the ending spoiled like that. And the fact that some of the people who'd spoiled us were flaming him did not help at all. It almost felt like they were rubbing the fact that they had spoiled us in our faces (although most of them probably didn't realize that there was a delay difference).
In hindsight, I should probably have started dishing out temp-bans the instant I saw what was obviously a spoiler in chat. Maybe if I had done that I would have been able to save some of Avilo's viewers from being spoiled (when someone gets banned on twitch, their messages will be deleted for viewers who are using the built-in web-chat). At the time I felt like everyone had already been spoiled, and temp-banning large numbers of people is never something you want to do unless absolutely necessary. Oh well, hindsight 20/20.
That was only the first game, there would be at least one more game (maybe two), and I wasn't going to have those games spoiled if I could help it. I quickly added a command to Chatty to display a warning message explaining that there was a delay discrepancy and that any spoilers would result in automatic temp-bans.
The second game started, and predictably a stream of viewers from basetradetv came pouring in. I tried to timeout spoilers as quickly as possible, but I found it difficult to recognize them quickly enough. At that point I gave up on the possibility of watching Avilo's stream spoiler-free, and I opened up a multitwitch to basetradetv and Avilo.
I attempted to follow both streams as best I could, trying to keep two different game-states in my head at the same time, keeping track of what bases had been taken, what units were on the minimap, what tech was built, and in addition to all that I was trying to pick out spoilers from Avilo's chat based on all the information I was juggling on both streams. Holy fuck, talk about sensory overload.
In addition to all the spoilers and trying to keep track of two different streams and two different minimaps all at once, I still had to deal with the usual twitch-chat problems. At times I got flooded with people who came into chat just to flame. Nothing unusual about that. What really irked me though, were people who came in and tried to incite drama drama between avilo and basetradetv. They'd come into chat and say "holy crap! Rifkin is really bashing Avilo hard!" Um dude, I have their stream open. Rifkin isn't bashing anyone.
I almost never perm-ban people, but damn I was tempted to perm these kids. "Oh look, Avilo and Rifkin don't hate each other. BETTER CHANGE THAT!". Yeah, this community isn't hateful enough, let's make sure everyone hates each other. That'll help keep this game alive [twitch meme removed]. Just another reminder that you can't believe everything you read in twitch chat.
During that tournament, I experienced twitch chat at its worst. However, I also, in a way, experienced twitch chat at its best. A number of viewers thanked me for protecting them from the spoilers. A few complimented me on how level-headed I remained (at the time I certainly didn't feel level headed, lol). And overall, many loyal fans stuck around to cheer avilo on even through the shitstorm.
I guess the moral of the story is to always set your stream delay to the minimum delay allowed by the tournament you're playing in. That way, someone decides to cast your game, there won't be any spoiler issues. Next time Avilo plays in a tournament I'll be sure to look into what the minimum delay allowed by the tournament is ahead of time. I'm pretty sure for WCS it is three minutes.
Of course, the "always use minimum allowed delay" policy can be problematic for tournaments that don't require any delay at all. What's a player supposed to do in that case? Stream without delay and pray they don't get stream-cheated? Put on a delay and risk having their viewers get spoiled if someone else decides to cast one of their games? That's a major dilemma.
I'm pretty sure we've had the opposite problem before. I seem to recall repeatedly warning viewers not to post spoilers if the go over to basetradetv.
Overall, I enjoyed the tournament, in spite of all the spoilers and flames. Avilo made it to the ro16, and the games (from what little I was able to catch) were entertaining, as they always are. Oh yeah, and "gg map" is the most awesome quote ever. In fact, I think I may have found a replacement for that chair emoticon he has that nobody ever uses.
Okay, that's the end of my rant. Time to go watch avilo's vods (since I didn't really get to watch the games as they were happening :p).
