Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Twitch is announcing some big updates to emotes on Friday, including that animated emotes will soon be available on the live-streaming platform.
Emotes are a huge part of the experience of Twitch. They’re everywhere in Twitch chats, and Twitch partners and affiliates can offer custom emotes to subscribers that can be used in chats on other channels. Every user on Twitch also has access to a set of global emotes, such as the wide-mouthed Komodo dragon “PogChamp” that’s often spammed in chats to express hype.
Right now, though, all emotes are static, so animated emotes could give streamers new ways to make their chats even more lively (or chaotic, depending on the chat). Twitch…