Twitch Plays Pokémon chat issues force it off general chat servers

Twitch Plays Pokémon chat issues have caused Twitch to move the phenomenon off the general chat servers and onto a dedicated event chat server.

According to the firm, the "unique nature and huge chat participation" has put "enormous and unforeseen stress" on the chat server, so it was forced to work on chat scalability improvements in the interim.

"We’re always working on improving the QoS of our chat system, and this has been a wonderful learning experience for us," said Twitch. "Our first adjustment on Sunday was to move the channel off of our general chat servers onto a dedicated event chat server, which we typically use for large events like The International and League Championship Series.

"This helped, but there were some fundamental issues with our chat infrastructure that required a review. When a phenomenon like TPP comes along which increases load on the system many fold, it gives us a great opportunity to discover and fix new issues and issues that only raise their head under super high load.”

Twitch said it will continue to "hammer away" at the chat system and make sure it "holds up to the load."

Twitch Plays Pokémon, a livestreamed playthrough of Pokémon Red/Blue in which viewer chat commands control the action, saw concurrent users peaking at over 75,000 at one point with total unique viewers hitting at least 300,000.