French beauty products retailer Sephora appears to have removed a recent listing for Screen Break ‘blue light’ protection spray after criticism from the gaming community.
The product – launched by popular influencer and actress Addison Rae under her ‘Item Beauty’ brand – promises to offer ‘relieve tired, screen-drained skin with this hydrating boost of blue light protection’ with a ‘botanical blend clinically proven to protect skin from screen-emitted HEV blue light and daily pollution’.
The listing for the Screen Break product now goes through to the Sephora homepage instead, and no Item products can be found on the retailer’s website at the time of writing. Screen Break is still up on the Item website however.
While studies have found that blue light from screens can negatively affect sleep patterns and throw the body’s biological clock out of sync (hence the introduction of night mode and dark mode in devices like smartphones as well as websites), studies suggest blue light is not harmful to skin.
Because of this, the esports and gaming community have called out products, companies and influencers who claim they have something that can ‘protect’ skin from blue light.
Last year, YouTuber and co-owner of esports organisation 100 Thieves, Valkyrae, was called out by the community for promoting a similar-looking RFLCT skincare product that promised to protect against exposure from blue light. She parted ways with the product a few weeks later.
Today, Valkyrae reacted to Addison Rae’s similar-looking Screen Break product:
Screen Break boasts the likes of ‘ashwagandha to protect skin, niacinamide to tone, glycerin to hydrate and dandelion extract to defend’.
Members of the esports and gaming community aren’t convinced by the product, as they weren’t with RFLCT, and they’ve let Addison Rae – who rose to fame on TikTok – know.
Prominent Rainbow Six Siege esports casters JessGoat and Fluke said:
British esports business journalist, Adam Fitch, who writes for jobs platform Hitmarker, said on Twitter of this news: “Just a reminder that Valkyrae never actually denounced the products and company she was shilling, she instead kept falling back on having seen research that nobody else could inspect.”
Harrie, content creator for UK esports organisation Guild, said “this is mental”, and MNM Gaming LoL director OfficerNaughty, said “this is a joke, no?”
There are many other hundreds of comments on Twitter questioning and denouncing the product.
Addison Rae rose to fame on TikTok.
She previously said of her Item Beauty brand: “Make-up has always been such a fun way to express myself and feel my best, so I wanted to create a clean beauty line with lush ingredients (and none of the bad stuff) for a natural look that makes you feel more like you.”
It’s not clear which company Addison Rae has worked with to produce this item, but it does look similar to RFLCT, which was part of a partnership between Valkyrae and Ideavation Labs.
We’ve contacted Ideavation Labs to check and will update this article if we receive a response.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
