Multiple Twitch outages causing streams lags, chat malfunctions, more

Twitch has been experiencing a string of technical difficulties across major facets of the site including its front page, lag on individual channels, as well as errors with the chat function, with more people reporting issues.

Since mid December 2020 and into the new year, Twitch users have been reporting site errors from small hiccups to the site being entirely down at times. While these issues have been brief in duration, they’ve been affecting multiple people at the same time.

“We are working to resolve the issues causing the site not loading correctly. Thank you for your patience,” the Twitch support page said on January 2. It had once again gone down for some people before picking back up again.

This has been a recurring theme for the site. There’s been three major occurrences in the last seven days that’s been a focal point of discussion among the community.

These errors come in light of reports of increased ads for people who use the uBlock Origin plugin and the prevailing notion is that these outages are the result of Twitch’s ongoing fight against these programs.

“You may be using a third party tool or browser extension that is impacting site performance. For the Twitch experience, head over to Twitch.tv and support the stream,” the Twitch notification sent out to some users read.

It should also be noted that the platform has been increasingly implementing new add ons and experimental features to Twitch which could also be affecting the performance of the site.

• Read more: Best up & coming streamers you must watch in 2021

These outages can affect streamer and viewer alike. A large part of Twitch’s strength is the live feedback between those broadcasting and those watching.

Disconnections and errors that prevent features, like Twitch Chat, can derail entire channels and create a frustrating experience for everyone involved.

• Read more: T Pain goes on hilarious rant over Twitch struggles

It’s unclear how long these interruptions will persist since they’ve yet to let up and have been increasing in regularity for some time now. As the site continues to troubleshoot its problems, people are keeping an eye out for any more interruptions on Twitch similar to the ones that have been occurring so far.