How Twitch’s Artifact Section Turned Into a Disturbing NSFW Page

Artifact, a digital collectible card game developed by Valve that died not long after its initial release in November 2018, got traction from across the world for all the wrong reasons when its Twitch section became filled with disturbing NSFW content that wasn’t relevant to the game at all.

In 2019, some renowned Twitch personalities pointed out that the title had died off to an extent that it had zero streams or viewers on the platform. Soon after that, members started taking advantage of it in an unexpected way and started streaming irrelevant content on the Artifact section on Twitch.

This content ranged anywhere from some simple League of Legends streams to full viewings of popular movies like Avengers: Endgame that attracted hundreds of viewers.

In only a few weeks, the Artifact section streams shifted towards extreme NSFW content including hardcore porn and the Christchurch mosque shooting, the latter of which was streamed for a full 20 minutes before eventually being removed by Twitch.

These streamers were often attempting to dodge bans by putting titles that seemed to be relevant to the game at first glance. However, once users clicked on the streams, the content wouldn’t be related to the game in any way.

To this day, the Artifact section of Twitch rarely sees someone playing the game itself, but much more often witnesses members attempting to stream irrelevant content to the section including movies, NSFW content, and more.