For a long time, the famous Twitch emote Kappa has had a very unknown Easter egg: the Golden Kappa, where the classic gray face is replaced by a golden version of itself.
This is an Easter egg added by Twitch’s developers, and only seen extremely rarely, for two reasons. First, Twitch themselves have never said anything about it, and haven’t even confirmed its existence. Second… the emote itself is only reported to be seen once every month of couple of months.
With approximate details, every day, one person over the entirety of Twitch users is picked at random to receive the Golden Kappa emote, and for the next day, every time they type Kappa, a golden version of the emote will appear instead of the normal one. Hovering over it will still show “Kappa”, proving that it wasn’t a custom emote. Any user can receive it, but there will be no notification of it, meaning that the only way to know whether one has it is to type Kappa in a chat and see the result.
Now, to correct my own approximate details:
- It’s not exactly one user at a time that receives this emote, as two people have once been sighted using it simultaneously. Nobody knows what the exact number is, or even whether it’s a fixed one.
- The duration isn’t exactly 24 hours, either. There again, nobody knows what the exact duration is, or even whether it’s a fixed one.
- Nobody knows how one gets picked to receive the emote, or whether it is truly random.
“Nobody knows” is a pretty good summary of the mystery surrounding the emote. Guesses and approximations are all we have. In fact, without seeing it with one’s own eyes, it would be very easy to believe that this is all a made up story just for the joke of “Everyone, type Kappa in the chat, to check if one of us has the golden one”.
And yet the facts are there, with screenshots, and I happened to witness one myself in June, merely one week after learning about it.
And well… As of today, this elusive mystery is no more.
For the past hour, every Twitch user has had their Kappa emote replaced with the golden Kappa. You can try it yourself – go on any channel, type Kappa in the chat, and witness the result! If you’ve come across a channel where the other users aren’t aware of the news yet, your message might also lead to the chat being filled with golden faces over the next minute. (If this doesn’t work, refresh your Twitch page.)
This sure comes as a surprise, and as of even more of one than the sight of a single one of the golden emote used to be. Why would Twitch do that? Why would they suddenly change this secretive Easter egg into a global thing? No answers as of now. We may get one soon, in which case it would end up featured here as well, or Twitch could revert the change and remain silent on the whole matter, keeping their mysterious stance on it.
My opinion is that this happened as a mistake from the developers’ side – and it should also most likely get rolled back shortly. But then again… perhaps it’s not, and is instead just the result of Twitch wanting to pull a joke on the entire community, and to give everyone some extra entertainment for a day.
As of now, this situation is consistent with how the golden Kappa has been since the beginning: we have nothing but guesses, speculations… and occasional surprises!
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