New Twitch Gambling Policy Kills Most Forms Of Gambling Streams
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Twitch gambling has been somewhat of a hot button issue for the streaming platform, and the latest scamming drama on the platform may have stopped gambling streams.
There have been many problems with gambling on the Twitch platform, with popular streamers like Félix “xQc” Lengyel leading the initial charge as one of the many who made it popular. But a $300,000 scamming sequence from another popular streamer, ItsSliker, has prompted heavy backlash from the community regarding the practice of allowing Twitch gambling streams. This has prompted Twitch to outright ban most forms of Twitch gambling on the platform, as mentioned in a tweet yesterday.
The proverbial nail in the coffin for Twitch gambling streams is a specific site mentioning, “on October 18th to prohibit streaming of gambling sites that include slots, roulette, or dice games that aren’t licensed either in the U.S. or other jurisdictions that provide sufficient consumer protection. These sites will include Stake.com, Rollbit.com, Duelbits.com, and Roobet.com.” Twitch will continue to allow sports, fantasy sports and poker as ‘appropriate’ gambling content on the platform. One of the more popular streams was hosted by Stake.com, and featured mega rap star Drake winning millions, but failing to show how much losing came with the wins.
The starting point of this, was ItsSliker asking for money with heartbreaking stories to scam subscribers or fellow streamers out of money with the promise that debts would be paid back in ‘two months.’ This lead to a huge backlog of debt, culminating in thousands of dollars lost from the community he helped build. In a confession video that still stands on his Twitch channel, Sliker confessed that all the lent funds were meant to fuel his gambling addiction.
The issue caused many prominent Twitch streamers to threaten striking until the platform banned gambling, with other popular personalities such as Pokimane tweeting “like if twitch should ban gambling,” which has over 315k taps. Popular streamer xQc and YouTube personality Ludwig Ahgren have teamed up and pledged to pay back the staggering $300,000 debt accrued by ItsSliker, also on Twitter.
Another prominent streaming gambler, Trainwreck, has also floated the other opinion in a tweet that states “to be clear, the people scapegoating SLOTS, BJ & ROULETTE and not blaming the individual, are the real problem. on top of that, SLIKER WAS A SPORTS BETTING ADDICT…” with agreeing on the notion “WITH THAT SAID, the STREAMERS & VIEWERS who sell a false reality should be banned, people who gate keep giveaways through codes that require you to gamble should be banned, people who hide all losses and only show wins should be banned, things like this are predatory.”
Twitch gambling streams that do not feature poker, fantasy sports or sports betting will be effectively banned starting on October 18.
