TwitchCon Foam Pit Closed After Sending Multiple People to the Hospital

Over the weekend, TwitchCon attendees reported injuries—some very serious—after jumping into a foam “pit” that was just a layer of squishy blocks over a concrete floor. 

On Sunday, adult performer and Twitch streamer Adriana Chechik jumped from a pedestal designed for a foam-jousting game and broke her back in two places. The foam pit, which was sponsored by Lenovo and Intel, was live-streamed as part of TwitchCon, so the moment it happened was caught on video and went viral. Chechik leaps from the platform, does a split in the air, and lands on her backside before rolling over in pain: 

TwitchCon is an annual conference hosted by the live-streaming platform, where professional and amateur streamers and their fans gather to socialize, network, and participate in games like this one, where two people battled with foam rods to knock their opponent into the pit. 

Chechik tweeted that she was undergoing surgery to insert a metal rod into her back following the injury. “Send your support. When it rains it pours and I am definitely feeling the rain right now,” she wrote.

Twitch declined to comment, and told Motherboard to contact Lenovo instead. Intel did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Lenovo told Motherboard: “We are aware of the incidents of TwitchCon visitors who sustained injuries in the gladiator game soft foam pit at the Lenovo booth. Safety remains our top priority and we are working with event organizers to look into the incidents.”

Washington Post reporter Nathan Grayson, who was at TwitchCon and checked out the pit in person, said in a tweet thread that the foam barely reached his knees. The safety standards for foam pits at trampoline parks, where people are similarly jumping into piles of squishy blocks, call for pits to be at least five feet deep, according to voluntary ASTM guidelines.

Several other attendees reported on social media that they were also injured, or saw people allegedly with injuries related to the pit. 

Streamer LochVaness tweeted that she sprained her ankle and dislocated her knee after jumping into the pit, and posted a photo of herself in a wheelchair after her own foam pit mishap. She told NBC that she had to go to the hospital to be treated.

“I will never be able to trust @Twitch at another convention in my entire life,” she tweeted, with a video from the moment of her injury.

This article has been updated to include comment from Lenovo.