We have witnessed a lot of controversies related to gambling content on Twitch in the past few months, and it seems like Twitch is finally taking some stern measures to address the growing concerns.
MORE:Pokimane And Mizkif Call For Twitch To Ban Gambling
While the debate around gambling has been going on for quite a while now, things went south when Twitch streamer Abraham Mohammed, aka Sliker, was caught scamming the Twitch community for over $300k. HasanAbi, Mizkif, and xQc confronted Sliker on a live call, to which he admitted that he was taking money from fans and creators by stating that he needed it to maintain his credit score. Several creators helped him directly, but they had no idea that Silker was doing all of this to fund his gambling addiction.
What followed is a movement by several top streamers on Twitch, asking the platform to ban gambling content as a whole. Pokimane, mizkif raised their voice about the issue on Twitter, with Ludwig and xQc going a step further to take steps to return money to those who got scammed by Sliker. Thankfully, Twitch has taken note of it and banned gambling content completely on Twitch.
In a statement on Twitter today,Twitchstates that it is aware that streamers are circumventing the ban on sharing links and referral codes to gambling content, so it is extending the ban to streaming gambling content as well. So far the sites that have been banned are Stake, Rollbit, Duelbits, and Roobet, but Twitch has added that more sites might be added to this list going forward. While slots, roulette, and dice games will be affected by the policy update, sports betting, fantasy sports, and poker is still allowed on the platform. The new policy goes live on October 18th.
Considering how many people have directly or indirectly got a gambling addiction due to these streams and how many times this issue has been raised by leading streamers, it is quite surprising how long it took Twitch to address the gambling fiasco. That being said, at least it’s better late than never.
