On January 6th, the day a riot of pro-Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, Twitch removed the iconic PogChamp emote because the person it depicted made statements calling for further violence. Two days later, the company committed to rotating in a new version of PogChamp every 24 hours, meaning many streamers briefly became the new face of the emote — but they were sometimes subjected to harassment following their new site-wide prominence.
On Friday, the Twitch community voted to crown a new face for PogChamp — and the winner isn’t the face of a streamer. It’s a Komodo dragon. Here’s what the emote looks like:
The community has spoken!
Let’s fire up the PogChamp Machine and activate the new face of Pog. pic.twitter.com/idQ2cNtMiH
— Twitch (@Twitch) February 12, 2021
If you’ve hung out in Twitch chats, you may actually recognize this emote: it’s the beloved KomodoHype. And I can see why it won the community vote. While the original PogChamp was Twitch’s hype emote, I think this Komodo dragon’s face is even better at expressing hype, especially with its shockingly huge maw that somehow seems to be smiling.
KomodoHype was selected over another excellent PogChamp done by streamer UmiNoKaiju. If you want to watch the full stream about the vote, you can check it out on Twitch.
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Originally published at https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/12/22280810/twitch-pogchamp-komodo-dragon-komodohype-replacement on .
