As part of the festivities at TwitchCon, which started on Friday and runs until Sunday evening, there’s a foam pit. Streamers have been jumping into it after doing battle on some elevated platforms, Gladiators-style. Some of them have reportedly been getting seriously hurt.
Adriana Chechik has suffered the most alarming injury, which you can see in the video below (first shared by Clippy Chimp), in which she leaps off a small platform, splits her legs then lands on her tailbone, before rolling over and saying “I can’t get up.” Shortly afterwards you can hear an announcer say, “No, no, she’s fine.”
She was not fine! Chechik later tweeted, “Well, I broke my back in two places and am getting surgery to put a meter rod in for support today. Send your support. When it rains it pours and I am definitely feeling the rain right now.”
Following her injury—and a call for others to come forward from her friend EdyBot, who was the other person jumping in the video above and who says she also hurt her back—others shared reports of injuries they say they suffered in the same pit, like a dislocated knee:
And another injured back:
And what looks like an ankle injury as well:
While attendees say the pit had remained open despite others being hurt before Chechik’s serious injury, and that it was opened once again shortly afterwards, The Washington Post’s Nathan Grayson says the attraction—a promo collaboration between Intel and Lenovo—has since been closed, both because of injuries but also because attendees using it had been “breaking rules.”
Attendees like EdyBot say a potential cause of the injuries was the shallowness of the pit; she describes it as being “like three cubes deep,” while Grayson says “the pit itself goes up a little past my knee,” and that it’s “shallow af.”
That’s pretty clearly visible 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 contacted Twitch for comment on the situation, and will update if we hear back.
UPDATE 12:50am, Monday October 10: A spokesperson for Lenovo, whose booth the incidents took place at, tells Kotaku:
We are aware of the incidents of TwitchCon visitors who sustained injuries in the gladiator game soft foam pit at the Lenovo booth. The area has since been closed for any further use while we work with event organizers to look into the incidents.