[Fixed] Twitch Mode web extension - infinite loading after a Twitch update broke extension

[bribrobot]

Hey Twitch streamer and viewer friends! Wanted to give a quick update on a known live issue with the Twitch extension and what the current status is!

tl;dr: We believe we now have a fix reviewed and live (extension version 0.0.14[dashboard.twitch.tv]) that should make connections work again!

Twitch has been going through a series of deprecations and disabling of features for their Extensions and APIs the past few months, and we’ve been doing our best to keep the Clone Drone Twitch Extension alive in the face of these changes. (The Clone Drone Twitch Extension is the Twitch Mode interface that overlays on top of Twitch streams on desktop web browsers)

What Twitch's updates originally broke

Early on in the year, Twitch deprecated their v4 API which the extension relied on to authenticate the game and extension with Twitch. (Fortunately we were able to fix this first issue quickly, as it didn’t require a series of Twitch platform review submissions to deploy like the other issues.)

Shortly after, Twitch introduced a new Content Security Policy whitelist which blocked our extension from being able to connect to the game/database. Our initial whitelist fix fixed it for a while, but later required an additional fix for new viewers - viewers who had loaded the extension previously would see it work, but new viewers would get the infinite loading spinner (where it shows a spinner instead of your danger coin count). Compounding this issue, the Twitch dev team had a backlog of extensions to review, and since the extension connects to the game, it requires scheduling a time for live review (phew!)

We believe we now have a fix that should make connections work again, it's made it through Twitch extension review, and we've now set it live!

Updated Steps for Fully Enabling the Extension as a Twitch Viewer

(For steps with images, see the guide here: https://support.doborog.com/l/en/clone-drone/enabling-clone-drone-twitch-extension )

Over the last couple of years, Twitch has also changed their steps to enable Twitch extension access for viewers, which caused the Clone Drone extension’s built-in instructions popup to become slightly out of date. The new steps to enable extension access (as a channel viewer) are:

Mouse over the screen, and click the Clone Drone in the Danger Zone button.

Click “Manage Access”

Click “Grant”. This lets the game show your username on top of bots you spawn.

Refresh the Twitch page. (This step wasn’t previously required). Once it loads, you should see the coin counter loading spinner:

And then once it connects, it should show an updating coin count from the game:

If you’re having trouble with the extension (or you’re on Twitch mobile chat or a TV integration, which does not have extension support), you can always use the chat integration. Typing !commands in chat will link to a list of commands that can be used to do all the same actions as the extension allows.

What will be the fate of the Twitch Extension?!?!

We know the current state is less than ideal, and are also frustrated with the frequency of changes and breakages with Twitch's extensions platform. We’ll do our best to keep the extension alive in the face of Twitch extension platform changes, but these changes are outside of our control and hard to predict. It’s entirely possible some time in the future Twitch could choose to completely disable Extensions or make a change we can’t adapt our extension to. But fingers crossed we can keep the Danger Coin party alive!

Thanks for your everyone’s patience and sorry for the ongoing disruption to the Twitch Extension - I know how frustrating it can be when something you rely on for a stream is broken!

Let us know if you are still having trouble with the extension on the forums, Discord #tech-support or emailing us directly at [e-mail] and we can help debug what’s going on!

[VastLite]