Author: Jesselyn Cook / Source: HuffPost
SAN JOSE, Calif. ― Annual live-streaming convention TwitchCon is underway here this weekend, drawing in tens of thousands of gamers from around the world.
It follows a deadly shooting at a similar event in late August, leaving many Twitch users anxious about attending the convention and disturbed by what some called “lax” security measures there.Chad Zinger and his wife drove 27 hours from their home in Edmonton, Alberta, to attend TwitchCon this year. After spending about four hours in line to get their entrance badges on Friday, they were shocked that getting through security took “less than a minute.”
“[Security staff] didn’t even ask us to take off our bags or set them on the table, they just waved us through,” said 32-year-old Zinger. He said he went in and out of the venue several times over the weekend, and to his surprise, the vape and large batteries in his bag set off a metal detector only at the venue’s smaller side entrance, but not when he entered through the main doors. “It makes me extremely uncomfortable, considering what happened in August,” he said.
Zinger and other attendees told HuffPost they felt TwitchCon organizers had decreased security measures to expedite the entry process. The line to enter the venue on Friday, the first day of the convention, wrapped around the San Jose McEnery Convention Center and down an alleyway, causing many attendees to miss the panels they’d traveled to see and prompting Twitch to send an apology email later that evening.
On Saturday morning, less than two hours after a mass shooting claimed at least 11 lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a HuffPost reporter passed through TwitchCon security without undergoing a bag check or putting her bag through a metal detector. Twitch streamer Keith Isaia said he had a similar experience on Friday when he set his bag down at the security table, walked through a metal detector without it, and a security guard returned his bag to him without…
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