Will Twitch Ban Gambling Streams? Controversy ensues

Twitch has announced to take action against growing concerns about casino streams and will update its policy in regard to gambling content.

While Twitch has been a hot topic in recent years with millions of viewers and streamers using this platform daily, it has also been the subject of many controversies. One of the most prominent is in reference to the amount of gambling content appearing on the Amazon-owned live-streaming platform.

Twitch Prohibits Gambling Streams

The platform broke the news on September 20th through a public tweet where they announced a ban on the streaming of gambling sites that are not licensed in the US or “other jurisdictions that provide sufficient consumer protection”.

The sites that were specifically pointed out in the tweet include Rollbit.com, Roobot.com, Stake.com, and Duelbits.com. They also stated that they might add more sites to this list. The ban seems to focus mainly on slots, dice games, and roulette and is scheduled to take effect from October 18th, 2022.

Recent Drama Surrounding Twitch Gambling Content

While streamers had gambled on Twitch in the past, it wasn’t until top creators like xQc and TrainwrecksTV joined that it picked up speed. By May 2022, the Slots category became the tenth most-watched genre on Twitch and had well over 86,000 live viewers.

While discussions regarding the fate of gambling content on the platform were underway for some time, things took a turn for the worst when Twitch streamer Abraham Mohammad (aka Sliker) admitted to scamming his fans and the Twitch community for over $200k to fund his gambling streams and his alleged addiction.

The confession came during a Twitch stream where a teary-eyed Mohammad admitted to his misconduct and explained how he started off gambling on skins in CS:GO.

The Twitch Community Unites

Following that event, big-name Twitch streamers such as Pokimane, Mizkif, DevinNash, and Ludwig, started a movement demanding that the platform ban gambling content as a whole. They even threatened to temporarily boycott Twitch for a week during Christmas (high-ad season) if the platform refused to take any serious actions against the issue at hand.

Meanwhile, a Twitter trend called #TwitchStopGambling, started by Pokimane and Mizkif, also gained traction. This joint effort among the Twitch community most likely led Twitch to make this decision.

The decision met with Support

Many users took to Twitter to express their excitement over the decision. Iman “Pokimane” Anys, a famous streamer with millions of followers, showed her support for the ban and tweeted “we did it ya’ll. public pressure, tweets, raising awareness, it all matters”.

An ecstatic user, @PogbaTwitch, tweeted, “IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING”, while @MaxGGS went off and wrote, “FINALLY A GOOD TWITCH UPDATE I JUST FELL TO MY KNEES WITH HAPPINESS”.

While some creators celebrated this win, others, such as AdinRoss, TrainwrecksTV, Roshtein, and xQc, did not take well to the announcement of the ban and voiced their opinion against it. Roshtein even saw a boost in exposure for the mentioned casinos.

All I’m thinking of is how Twitch just promoted 4 crypto casinos by including their names/URL in their official statement. So these 4 casinos just got their biggest exposure ever. Gambling streams is hotter than ever before and will never dissapear. It will get better.

— Roshtein (@ROSHTEINS) September 21, 2022

Moreover, it’s also important to note that this ban doesn’t prohibit the practice entirely since there will be carveouts that authorize fantasy sports, poker, and sports betting.