On January 6, the day a riot of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, Twitch removed the iconic PogChamp emote because the person portraying it made statements calling for further violence. Two days later, the company committed to turning in a new version of PogChamp every 24 hours, which means many streamers have briefly become the new face of the emote – but they have sometimes been plagued by their new prominent location.
The Twitch community voted Friday to award a new face to PogChamp – and the winner is not the face of a striker. It’s a Komodo dragon. Here’s what the emote looks like:
If you’ve been to Twitch chats, you may recognize this emote: it’s the beloved KomodoHype. And I can see why it got the community vote. Although the original PogChamp was the hype emblem of Twitch, I think the Komodo dragon’s face even better to express hype, especially with its shockingly large ie that somehow seems to smile.
KomodoHype was chosen over another excellent PogChamp done by the striker UmiNoKaiju. If you want to see the full stream of the vote, you can check it out on Twitch.