“D.Va’s Nano Challenge”, a new Overwatch promotion in which Blizzard teams up with popular streamers, has been by most counts a success. Yesterday, over 100,000 people simultaneously watched Overwatch streamer Seagull in hopes of earning in-game drops.
Streamers who aren’t part of the promotion have decided they also want a slice of that sumptuous viewer pie, even if that means faking it.
D.Va’s Nano Challenge offers rewards for both winning matches in the game and for watching certain streamers outside it. These streamers, hand-picked by Blizzard, include fan favourites such as Seagull and questionable selections such as notorious holier-than-thou yet horny-on-main streamer Kephrii. To denote that they’re part of the promotion, included streamers have been putting “drops enabled” in their stream titles. And now streamers who didn’t win the Blizzard lottery are doing it too.
Thus far, the highest-profile example of this trend is Dafran, an Overwatch streamer whose pro-level skill is offset by the fact that he’s a huge troll who’s previously been suspended from Blizzard’s Overwatch Contenders series for griefing and streaming anime porn, among other things.
While it’s seemed at points as though he’s taken his knocks and gotten back on the straight and narrow, he just can’t seem to resist pulling trolly stunts that piss off large portions of the community.
And so, as part of his most recent stream which took place earlier today, he put “DROPS ENABLED” in his title and had a ball. He justified it by putting a GIF of raindrops in the lower left corner of his stream — which, to be fair, is kinda funny.
He proceeded to stream YouTube videos and kind of play Overwatch for four hours. Then, at the very end, he hosted Blizzard-approved streamer Mirage and told his viewers to tune in to that stream for “real drops”.
I did a cursory sweep of Twitch’s Overwatch directory earlier today and found more than 10 other streamers who aren’t part of the promotion claiming to offer drops, all of them significantly less popular than Dafran. Here are a few:
Given that their view counts aren’t particularly high, it doesn’t seem as though it’s working as a troll job or a legitimate tactic.
To their credit, some other big streamers such as Emongg have been specifying in their titles that they do not have drops enabled — just to make sure people don’t get the wrong idea.
Kotaku reached out to both Blizzard and Twitch to ask if streamers who’ve faked being part of the promotion will be punished, but so far, neither company has responded. In the meantime, a PSA: Streamers who actually have drops enabled also get a green “drops enabled” graphic in their stream windows that looks like this:
So if that’s there, you’re good. If not, probably steer clear.
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