It’s been a tough 24 hours for purple broadcasters. After a scandal broke that a Twitch streamer scammed viewers and colleagues alike with an alleged $200,000 for funding Counter-Strike: Global Offensive addiction, leading figures began to pressure the streaming company to address the larger, more underlying problem. Gambling, many people have been arguing for a while, has become a scourge on the platform, as some wealthy creators promote content that could harm young, impressionable fans. While Twitch seems to just let it happen for a long time, the platform is owned by Amazon announced a major change regarding gambling streams today that will have huge ramifications for creators as well as viewers.
According to a new update released on social media, Twitch will no longer allow “streaming of gambling sites including unlicensed slots, roulette or dice games in The United States or other jurisdictions provide adequate consumer protections.” The list currently includes Stake.com, Rollbit.com, Duelbits.com and Roobet.com although Twitch says it could expand as the company continues to assess the situation. However, Twitch will continue to allow sports betting, fantasy sports, and poker. These appear to be high-level changes that will go into effect starting October 18, and Twitch will be sharing more specific details soon.
While we don’t have all the gambling-related information on the platform yet, it’s likely that Twitch will share these important details soon as all the uproar kicked in at the end of September. Earlier this week, streamers like Pokimane suggested they would team up with some of the other celebrities on the platform and attack during high-player times, such as Christmas, unless Twitch gives it a go. issue a statement about the crisis or issue new gambling rules.
While the new rules don’t ban gambling outright, they do target some of the biggest sites favored by streamers or sponsor popular streamers. And the divide will be huge: Not only is gambling one of the most popular content genres, with the biggest faces on platforms like xQc, some creators like Tyler Faraz “Trainwreck” Niknam have claimed claim that they earn up to a million a month from the gambling companies they refer online.
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That’s not counting how much might be made from viewers gambling while sharing the referral codes streamers blast on stream (something they no longer can do), or any other sponsorships a Twitch streamer might receive through more conventional means on the platform. While these streamers have stressed in the past that they’ve told viewers not to gamble themselves, it was obvious that business was booming.
In its announcement, Twitch reminded people that it already had some gambling rules in place, but that “some people circumvent those rules and expose our community to potential harm.”
While the new rules aren’t live yet, people who pushed for this change are celebrating. There was, after all, plenty of skepticism over whether or not Twitch would do anything further about gambling, with some famous creators like Hasan Abi are expressing that the activity was simply generating so much revenue that the platform banned it altogether.
“We all made it,” said Pokimane, who made it through 300,000 people expressed their support against gambling streams in just one day, tweeted. “Public pressure, tweeting, raising awareness, it all matters.”
