Twitch users can finally credit emote artists

polygon.com:

When you think of Twitch, you think of Twitch chat. And when you think of Twitch chat, you think about emotes, the small, emoji-like images that are basically their own language on the streaming platform.

Twitch’s global emotes, available to all streamers, are the starting point. But most Twitch streamers have access to custom emotes, which are often spins on different global emotes — for instance, a streamer having a PogChamp of their own face — and help bolster a community feel. Emotes can make communities feel connected, like they’re sharing the same secret language. Simply put, emotes are important, and that’s why there are communities of artists building out an economy of on the edges of Twitch’s business.

But there’s never been a great way to credit artists for their emote work, beyond a mention somewhere scrolled down a page or an on-air shoutout, which is easily missed. But that’s changing: Twitch announced Tuesday that it’s adding ways to credit emote artists for their work.

Related

There are two parts to this: emote attribution and artist badges. Emote attributions are a label that can be assigned to emotes themselves, tagging in an artist’s Twitch channel any time someone clicks on an emote. You can see what this looks like below — the new detail is listed under Tier 1 Sub Emote, with a link out to the artist’s channel.

Creators can also assign an artist badge to five different people per channel; Twitch expects this to be used for emote, overlay, and avatar artists. The artist badge is a little paint brush, outlined in blue, that’ll show up in Twitch chat.

“As a disabled self-employed artist, creating art for Twitch streamers has been life changing for me,” Twitch streamer and emote artist Jesshy Carr