Hello, and welcome once again to Replay, WIRED’s twice-monthly column about everything happening in the world of video games. The weather’s starting to get colder, but the news over the past couple of weeks has been spicy as ever. Here’s everything you might have missed.
Among Us Hit by Spam Attack Following AOC Stream
Recently, US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) engaged with the voting public via a big Twitch stream in which she played the party game/treachery simulator Among Us. Not long after, the game was plagued by a spam attack that launched a bevy of pro-Republican messages to players, which seems … possibly related. Players found themselves locked out of games and instead spammed with messages telling them to “subscribe to Eris Loris” along with an endorsement of President Trump. According to IGN, the attack crippled the game for a time while InnerSloth, its developers, worked to push an emergency update.
Interestingly, this is one hack where the culprit is, uh, pretty clear: Eris Loris is a YouTube channel run by, presumably, the hacker in question. Eurogamer spoke with this individual, who said that they make hacks for a variety of games—they sell cheats, essentially—and that the Among Us attack, which was perpetrated using bots, was “a publicity stunt.” As for the Trump endorsement, the individual said, “I’m a college student, and I support Trump,” which, yeah, that all checks out. Case closed, gang.
The Navy’s Guidelines for Talking About War Crimes on Twitch
Speaking of Twitch, did you know that recently the US military has been making an effort to use the platform to promote the armed services? If you spend any time there, you probably do. But for those who don’t, just know that the move has been fairly controversial and has resulted in a lot of chatter about American war crimes on Twitch. Now, thanks to journalist Micah Loewinger and an Freedom of Information Act request, we know a bit more about the training given to potential Navy streamers who will be faced with the aggression of Twitch chat, including the ever popular question “What’s your favorite war crime?”
While the proper response would probably be to say “Yikes,” the Navy, as Loewinger discovered, actually came up with a few different responses, such as “I’m here to play games. I have no interest in engaging in personal attacks,” and “I am here to hang out with people like me who love gaming. If you want to know more about my life in the Navy, I’m happy to discuss. But I will not speak on behalf of others.”
