As part of the festivities at TwitchCon, which started Friday and ran through Sunday night, there was a foam pit where streamers jumped in after battling on several high-profile platforms, Fighter-Style. Some of them were seriously hurt.
Adriana Chechik suffered the most alarming injury, which you can see in the video below (first shared by Chimpanzee Clippy), in which she jumps off a small platform, separates her legs then lands on her tailbone, before rolling over and saying “I can’t get up”. Right after that, you can hear an announcer say “no, she’s fine”.
She’s not fine! Chechik later tweeted “Wow, I broke my back in two places and today I am having surgery to attach a watch bar for support. Submit your support. When it rains, it pours and I am definitely feeling the rain right now. “
After her trauma—and the call for others to continue from her friend EdyBotanother danced in the video above and who said she also injured her back — others shared reports of injuries they said they suffered in the same pit, such as a dislocated knee:
And another has a back injury:
And what looks like an ankle injury:
While attendees said the pit remained open despite others being wounded by Chechik’s serious injuries, and it was reopened again shortly after, The By Washington Post Nathan Grayson says the attraction — a promotional partnership between Intel and Lenovo — was shut down, both because of injury but also because attendees’ use of it “violated the rules.”
Attendees like EdyBot say one potential cause of injury is the shallowness of the pit; she described it as being “like three cubes deep”, while Grayson said “the hole itself goes up a little above my knees” and it’s “shallow in the distance”.
That’s pretty clear in the video above; A foam pit is supposed to swallow you up, but these guys bounce back pretty hard and quickly after landing.
We’ve reached out to Twitch for comment on the situation and will update if we receive a response.
UPDATE 12:50 a.m., Monday, October 10: A spokesperson for Lenovo, whose booth the incident took place, said Kotaku:
We learned about an incident of a TwitchCon visitor getting injured during a gladiator game in a soft foam pit at the Lenovo booth. This area has been closed for further use while we work with event organizers to review the incidents.
