Twitch banning gambling starting in October

Twitch announced that it will revise its policy regarding gambling in October 18th. This statement was posted by the company to its Twitter account. It acknowledged the increase in gambling discussion on Twitch.

“We’ll be making a policy update 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,” the statement reads. These sites will include Stake, Rollbit, Duelbits, and Roobet among others that Twitch “may identify” as the policy is rolled out. Websites that focus on poker, fantasy sports and sports betting will be permitted, according to the statement.

After popular content creators such as Pokimane, HasanAbi and Asmongold had called for Twitch’s ban on slots content, the #TwitchStopGambling hashtag started trending earlier this week on Twitter. Devin Nash and Pokimane had discussed the idea of banning gambling on Twitch during the Christmas high-ad campaign.

Sliker, a well-known streamer and fraudster, scammed his viewers and other streamers to make more than $200,000 as reported by Kotaku Waypoint, The Verge, and The Verge. Sliker, well known for his playing style. ValorantAnd Global Offensive Counter-StrikeHe admitted to it in a Twitch stream. He explained in the video how he got into gambling with skins. CS:GO.

Twitch has already put in place measures to combat gambling. In 2021 Twitch revised its policies in an effort to stop streamers sharing referral codes to websites that offer slots, roulette or other dice-based games. However, this hasn’t stopped gambling’s proliferation across the platform.

Bloomberg reported that Twitch gambling has been growing rapidly as streamers are sponsored by gambling websites to play online. Streamers like xQc regularly stream slots to as many as 70,000 subscribers and have made deals with online gambling websites. The Twitch category Slots was the 10th most watched on Twitch at the time this article was published. It has over 86,000 viewers.