Twitch Plays Pokemon causes system-wide chat problems

Streaming video service Twitch has said that the ongoing Twitch Plays Pokemon stream is causing chat problems across its entire service.

Twitch Plays Pokemon has over the last few days seen thousands of players attempt to tackle Nintendo title Pokemon Red via controls input into the stream’s chat window.

At its peak 100,000 users were attempting to ‘play’ the game, causing widespread issues. Twitch Plays Pokemon has already been moved onto its own dedicated chat server, although this hasn’t eradicated all the problems.

Twitch Plays Pokemon is a bonafide phenomenon,” customer experience director Jason Maestas said. It has captured the attention of the gaming community and even made its way into the mainstream press.

The unique nature and huge chat participation in the TwitchPlaysPokemon experiment has put enormous (and unforeseen) stress on our chat system. We’re always working on improving the QoS of our chat system, and this has been a wonderful learning experience for us.

We LOVE Twitch Plays Pokemon and we want to see where this grand experiment leads us all. While it plays itself out, we’ll continue to hammer away at our chat system and make sure it holds up to the load.”

On a related note, if you wish to mentally torture yourself make sure you check out Twitch Plays SMB (Super Mario Bros) for some admirable and prolonged gameplay failure.