Maya Higa has become the first Twitch streamer to give a main-stage TED talk after discussing her work with Alveus Sanctuary
The crowd gave her a standing ovation
Okay, I'm going to word vomit a bit on the timeline. The current state of NA VALORANT below the Tier 1 level is in an absolutely terrible place. Tier 2 was fundamentally killed when Riot introduced the franchise system without providing hands-on support for the Challengers League or offering proper financial aid to the orgs willing to invest in it and help grow and support our future players and teams.
It's honestly not surprising that match-fixing for money eventually happened. These players are putting in all their time and energy to become the best, chasing their dream of making it big and joining a Tier 1 team. When that hope is lost, people may resort to accepting money to throw matches — and to be honest, that kind of money could be life-changing for them.
I think one thing Riot failed to consider is that Tier 2 is a crucial pillar of support for Tier 1 play. It's incredibly exciting to see new underdog teams and rising talent perform on the big stage — it often makes for some of the most competitive and thrilling esports moments of all time. When that pillar starts to crumble, there's a very real risk the entire structure could collapse.
It's genuinely depressing and disappointing to see Riot mishandle a game I truly love and care about (even if I criticize it a lot). I hope they come to realize that they need to support the entire competitive ecosystem — not just the very top.
Lastly, streaming the game and trying to create content around ranked has been a nightmare. Every streamer constantly getting stream-sniped, which forces people to delay stream and ultimately kill chat interaction. Matches are being thrown — again — either for money or to help others climb and reach high spots on the competitive leaderboard, even though it’s ultimately pointless.
The incentive to play ranked has remained the exact same since the game launched. A lot of ranked players aren't excited to play — they're just addicted, queuing up and chasing the feeling the game gave them long ago. There have been no exciting new rewards for reaching the top, and no new game modes that allow for fun, expressive content to be created.
I'm still pretty heated as I write this. I just want what’s best for the game — both at the top and everything beneath it. We, the players, need to see action — not just words. Thanks for coming to my TED talk, and I'm super excited to receive my 10th Radiant gun buddy.
Hey everyone! I’m sure some of you have probably noticed that I haven’t been streaming at all recently.
For those closest to me, this won’t come as a surprise—stepping away from streaming is something I’ve been thinking about for years. Truthfully, streaming was never my dream or end goal. That’s not to say it wasn’t a great opportunity (and yeah, it is an easy job in a lot of ways), but before I ever hit “go live,” I was studying with plans to head to med school. I put that on the back burner to give streaming a real shot.
Over time, though, I started to feel a growing sense of resentment toward it.
So I’ve made the decision to take an indefinite break from streaming. It’s what’s best for me right now—and honestly, I haven’t felt this happy and at peace in years.
Part of this is due to some recent health complications, and part of it is just shifting priorities—I’ve taken on new commitments outside of streaming, including competing in Game Changers.
Thank you all for the support up to this point. Stay happy, stay healthy, and take care of yourselves.
We are devastated to announce the passing of Timber, our 11.5 year old wolfdog ambassador. We were able to rescue him from an inadequate situation and give him a great quality of life for the short time he was with us. Last night, Timber was observed vomiting. When it was evident that it was more than a normal upset stomach, we rushed him to the emergency animal hospital. He had to undergo emergency surgery for GDV (Bloat), which is when the stomach flips. This is a rare issue with a canine of his size. We had an amazing veterinary team that did everything they could for Timber, including plasma transfusion and top of the line critical care treatment. With a surgery like this, there are a lot of complications that can happen during recovery. After the surgery was complete, Timber was never able to come out of anesthesia and was not responding well to treatments. We made the difficult decision to end Timber’s fight. We wanted to give Timber every chance to overcome this, however we had to consider the post-surgery pain and stress on his aging body. Thankfully we had a great vet team that made sure he was in no pain whatsoever. The decision to euthanize an animal is never easy, however in some cases it can truly be the last gift that we can give them, and we believe that taking quality of life into consideration is of the utmost importance.
It is hard to come up with words to describe the sudden and devastating loss of Timber. We anticipated that we wouldn’t have long with Timber due to his age and history, but we didn’t expect it to be so soon. It will take some time for staff to process, and he will be forever missed. We are also incredibly aware that many of you will also be grieving Timber at this time, know that we are grieving with you.
We are aware that there will be many questions regarding Awa. We have already reached out to our connections about the steps we need to take to potentially rescue another wolfdog to provide companionship for Awa. We will provide updates when we can.
We cannot thank everyone enough for loving Timber and making space for him in your hearts. Rest in peace sweet boy, we were so lucky to be part of your journey.
Update: YouTuber Fidias has responded to the anger over his video.
It's a semi-apology and an excuse about having not done enough "research" to realize that Japanese people don't like crime.
He has not taken the video down.