As the conversation regarding Twitch and the platform’s allowance of gambling streams continues to swirl, the platform has smashed its first blow.
Twitch said it would ban “streaming of gambling sites that include slots, roulette, or dice games” in a policy update effective October 18th, tweeted on Tuesday evening.
Twitch is not banning all gambling or streaming of gambling forms. Instead, there will be a carveout permitting sports betting, fantasy sports, and poker. At the same time, the streaming of slots, roulette, and dice is only forbidden if the sites streamed aren’t “licensed in the U.S. or other jurisdictions that deliver sufficient consumer protection.”
The gambling sites swept up in the ban include Stake.com, one of the most popular slot gambling sites streamed on Twitch. In addition, big streamers like xQc and Trainwreckstv repeatedly feature it on their streams.
Gambling on Twitch has evolved into a hot-button topic as wealthy streamers promote their services, ostensibly to minors, and potentially feeding gambling addictions. Earlier this week, Its Sliker admitted he tricked hundreds of thousands of dollars from fellow streamers to support his sports betting pattern.
From that event, big-name streamers such as Pokimane, DevinNash, and Mizkif, presently embroiled in a different but tangentially related incident, suggested or supported a potential boycott of Twitch if the platform didn’t ban gambling from the site. Now, that action may no longer be required. However, sports betting is the recent form of gambling that began this current conversation and will be spared when the ban takes effect.
Twitch stated it would share more about its gambling policies ahead of its implementation on October 18th. Twitch, an American video live streaming assistance that focuses on video game live streaming, including esports competitions and music broadcasts, creative content, and “in real life” streams.
It is operated by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. It was introduced in June 2011 as a spin-off of the general-interest streaming platform Justin.tv. Content on the site can be viewed either live or via video on demand.
The popularity of Twitch eclipsed that of its general-interest counterpart. In October 2013, the website had 45 million unique viewers, and by February 2014, it was considered the fourth-largest source of peak Internet traffic in the United States. At the same time, Justin. T.V.’s parent company was re-branded as Twitch Interactive to represent the shift in focus – Justin.tv was shut down in August 2014.
That month, the service was acquired by Amazon for US$970 million, which later led to synergies with the company’s subscription service Amazon Prime. In addition, Twitch received Curse in 2016, an operator of online video gaming communities. It introduced means to buy games through links on streams, along with a program permitting streamers to receive commissions on the sales of games they play.
Twitch had more than 100 million viewers per month. In 2017, Twitch stayed the leading live streaming video service for video games in the U.S. and had an advantage over YouTube Gaming, which shut down its standalone app in May 2019. As of February 2020, it had 3 million monthly broadcasters and 15 million daily active users, with 1.4 million average concurrent users. As of May 2018, Twitch had over 27,000 partner channels.