Streaming gambling at Twitch has hit a roadblock after the platform recently announced a crackdown on the practice. As of October 18, the site will prohibit the streaming of gambling sites which are not licensed in the United States or those which do not offer sufficient customer protection in other jurisdictions. This includes sites such as Duelbits, Roobet, Rollbet, and Stake, though other sites may be singled out in the future.
Slots have grown to become one of the most popular game categories on Twitch, but their rise in popularity has been far from a smooth ride. In fact, debate has grown for a while now, with many calling for an end to the practice, citing a variety of reasons.
It appears the recent confession by streamer ItsSliker proved to be the tipping point that prompted Twitch to act. In an emotional clip, ItsSliker confessed to scamming viewers and fellow streamers out of money to fund his gambling addiction. The figure has been put as high as $300,000, which two content creators, xQc and Ludwig Ahgren, tweeted they will try to pay people back.
This leads us to Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, Mark Johnson, who has spent eight years studying Twitch together with the gambling content. Johnson spoke to a news media outlet about Twitch’s new policy and how it may or may not affect streamed content. The key question asked was; ‘The immense success of slots streams on Twitch shows that there is a big market for this, but it’s also a market of people who are already using Twitch and spending time there — so would moving slots streams to another platform generate the same audience numbers?‘
Twitch had previously prohibited the sharing of links or referral codes to sites that have slots, dice games, or roulette, but some have managed to find workarounds. Indeed, streamers like Trainwreckstv have allegedly been pulling in multi-million dollar deals to promote certain sites, despite the prohibition.
Gambling streams are clearly big business, and some of those involved may be looking at new ways to capture viewers’ attention. Johnson says, ‘I’ve actually already seen some streamers directing their viewers to YouTube, so maybe this will become the next location. I definitely don’t think this is the final development though. This is just one in a sequence and we’ll have to see what happens next and precisely how, and to what extent, Twitch ‘enforce’ these new rules.’
For many, the prohibition could not have come soon enough. A number of streamers have been calling for a ban for a while now. Devin Nash was said to be one who left the platform because of gambling streams, tweeting that there are ‘…dozens more rats who will abuse the system and their audience for fame and dollars. This is a platform problem, not a people problem.’ Popular streamers Mizkif and Pokimane were said to have been looking into ways of hitting Twitch in the advertising pocket by leaving the site during the holiday period. Part of Pokimane’s response to the latest news was, ‘we did it y’all.’
However, Mark Johnson does not sound entirely convinced, ‘These websites might have had a potentially major future source of revenue and interest cut off, however, as these channels were only growing and getting larger and larger in terms of interest, I don’t think their bottom lines will get changed too much.’ Whilst some casino streamers have already made the move to a platform known as DLive, for now, we will have to wait and see what effect the crackdown will have when it comes into place on October 18. Until then, it’s unclear how content creators affected by the prohibition, as well as online casinos in its scope, will react.
