It’s the end of an era. The rights to one of Twitch’s most iconic and beloved emotes, Bible Thump, will expire on Sept. 30, despite the creator’s willingness to come to an amicable solution with Twitch to keep it on the streaming platform.
In a perplexing post from Twitch on X (formerly Twitter) on Sept. 25, the streaming platform announced the “sad news” that the “rights to our beloved emote expire” on Sept. 30, after being one of the most popular “crying face” and “sadness” emotes for the past 11 years. But fans aren’t buying Twitch’s sad facade and want to know why the platform doesn’t “simply renew the rights then” or “work with Edmund McMillen,” the creator of the Bible Thump emote, to come up with a solution.
After Twitch’s announcement on X, McMillen was inundated with comments from Twitch users begging him to “save” chat because too many would “miss the emote.” And they’re right because it’s adorable, super spammable, and one of the best sad-face emotes on the platform. However, McMillen responded that it was up to Twitch and that he was “100 percent fine with coming up with a good solution to keep or modify the emote.”
What’s interesting about McMillen’s response is that he also mentions how he’s “not in control of the new Twitch policies,” which makes it sound like there’s more to renewing the rights of this emote than simply signing them over for another 10 years. We looked at the current Twitch emote guidelines, and there doesn’t seem to be any reason why this emote could be flagged or why it would need to be modified to fit the new policies unless there’s a problem with the fact that it’s called Bible Thump, which might be offensive to some.
Regardless of the reason, Twitch has no plans to renew the rights for the Bible Thump emote, as it’s made clear in its not-so-sad statement. But all is not lost because the emote is still available on 7TV, an emote platform that works alongside Twitch. For how long, though, we don’t know. We’re hoping it’s forever because it’s iconic, and Twitch won’t be the same without it.
