It's undeniable at this point, Microsoft and the Xbox brand are pivoting alt-right. Today, Microsoft announced a partnership with Kick, a company best known as the place where cancelled Twitch streamers go to operate without any of the annoying guardrails on that platform.
The partnership comes with a dedicated Kick app now available on Xbox consoles. Its description reads:
"Our creators march to the beat of their own drum, as do we, disrupting our opps with a 95-5 subscription split, our creator incentive program, and the freedom to multistream. That's why the likes of xQC, Asmongold, and MaxHolloway all pick KICK."
Um, that's absolutely not why. Kick is well-known for courting streamers that make other platforms and their advertisers uncomfortable. In August, Raphaël “Jeanpormanove” Graven died after appearing in several humiliation streams on the platform that included him being assaulted.
The dystopian future in which we televise all of humanity worst instincts has arrived. Stories such as The Running Man, which recently got another adaptation, may not go far enough in capturing the depravity of our entertainment.
Kick is also controversial because it promotes gambling content. Twitch banned gambling in 2022 after numerous controversies, including streamer Abraham "Sliker" Mohammad admitting to scamming viewers and other content creators out of $200,000 to fund a Counter-Strike gambling addiction.
Some of Twitch's most high-profile creators including Pokimane and Devin Nash threatened to strike, and the Amazon-owned platform decided the numerous controversies simply weren't worth it.
So why, you ask, would Kick lean so aggressively into content that poses so many risks? I'm glad you asked. Two of Kick's founders, Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani, also own the gambling website Stake. Microsoft getting into bed with these guys would have seemed bizarre just months ago.
But that was before the Trump administration shared two Halo memes, one of which made a joke referring to ICE as the UNSC and immigrants as The Flood, parasitic alien villains in the Halo mythology. When media contacted Microsoft to say something, anything, about its console mascot being used in this way, the company declined comment.
At the time, we thought maybe Microsoft just didn't want to get involved in any political debate. But this decision makes it clear Microsoft is involved. It has a made a conscious choice to support the likes of Adin Ross and Asmongold.
Behold the Microsoft Xbox, the console of the cancelled.