The Twitch platform has been no stranger to controversy historically, with the wide-ranging avenues of entertainment that streamers engage in inevitably dredging up questions of morality and disagreements among the streaming giant's viewers. As the platform has grown in recent years, so too has the frequency of large-scale controversies and the potential implications they could have on impressionable audiences.
In this regard, gambling on Twitch has long been a source of disagreement, with some of the largest streamers on the platform leaning heavily into controversial sponsored gambling streams. This long-standing issue recently reached a boiling point, leading to most forms of gambling content being banned from the site, but the previous gambling-related incidents that led to this point should not be ignored.
CSGO Gambling On Twitch
Counter Strike: Global Offensive has often been a source of gambling-related controversy, and so it is no wonder that this inevitably translated over to the Twitch platform. CSGO's case unboxing system provides a small opportunity for players to possibly receive items worth huge amounts of real-world money and was one of the first titles to really spark widespread discourse surrounding this kind of "soft gambling" that was going unchecked within the video game industry.
Websites quickly began exploiting the craze surrounding Counter Strike's in-game items, with sites like CSGO Lotto allowing players to trade their items for eligibility into raffles for extremely valuable prizes. Many streamers began promoting these kinds of websites, often without disclosing their financial stakes in the services they were promoting. For example, popular streamer Phantoml0rd was famously permanently banned from Twitch for just this reason, despite later winning a civil suit against the platform. Twitch would quickly go on to ban these kinds of raffle or gambling websites related to CSGO, marking one of the first major gambling controversies for the service.
Crypto Gambling and Sponsored Gambling Streams
Non-game related gambling remained rampant on the Twitch service despite the aforementioned controversy, with gambling content quickly rising to be one of the most popular topics on Twitch in recent years. With the rise of cryptocurrency coming hand-in-hand with increased attention on gambling on the Twitch platform, the marriage of the two controversial subjects seemed like an inevitability to many viewers.
Gambling services such as Stake.com have risen dramatically in popularity and spending power in recent years, allowing players to gamble with the cryptocurrency of their choice. This popularity allowed crypto gambling services to offer extremely lucrative sponsorship deals for big-time streamers to gamble on their websites. For example, popular streamer Adin Ross was reportedly being paid upwards of $900,000 a week to play on Stake.com, meaning a glaring and massive vested interest was present.
With many other massively popular streamers such as xQc and Trainwreckstv receiving similar deals, many claim that this kind of unchecked promotion of gambling services from people who are receiving huge sponsorship deals can be harmful to audiences, while also questioning the credibility of the showcased win rates of the gambling sites on stream. This kind of gambling was present on Twitch for several years, being a lingering controversy that was only recently addressed thanks to what is likely Twitch's most high-profile gambling controversy to date.
ItsSliker's Gambling Ban and Twitch's Response
It was always clear that Twitch's long history with gambling among its top streamers was eventually going to reach a climax, and this came recently with news regarding long-time streamer ItsSliker. Sliker began streaming on Twitch in 2019, quickly building up a commendable fan base via his networking with other streamers and unique commentary. Currently sitting at over 430,000 followers and once commanding thousands of concurrent Twitch subscribers, recent allegations surrounding the streamer have had a massive domino effect on the platform as a whole.
Over the last few weeks, many people simultaneously came forward accusing ItsSliker of defrauding them out of significant amounts of money. Contacting friends, other streamers, and long-term fans, Sliker asked for various sums of money over the course of several years under the false pretenses of a locked bank account and the desire to pay the loan back with interest. Never paying back any of his victims, Sliker would instead use the funds to extend what he described as a serious gambling addiction, in which he fell into a self-destructive spiral.
With his Twitch career falling to the wayside as a result, it is estimated that ItsSliker stole close to $200,000 from people within the Twitch community, sparking a huge flurry of debates surrounding the state of Twitch gambling and how it is ruining the platform. In the wake of these revelations, extremely influential streamers such as Pokimane took to Twitter to demand that Twitch ban gambling on the platform, with her tweet receiving over 300,000 likes.
Following intense subsequent pressure from the community on what was already a longstanding controversy, Twitch has banned most forms of gambling from the service, with the aforementioned crypto-gambling giant Stake.com being a named company that is no longer welcome on the streaming platform. This is enormous news for the company considering just how popular gambling streams are on the service, with streamers and fans on both sides of the argument continuing in intense debate.
With the long-term chapter of gambling controversies on the Twitch platform seemingly coming to an end, it is clear that the streaming service is shifting dramatically in appeal and ethos. While many will agree that the move might be in Twitch's best interests, the tension and infighting that it is causing among its most popular streamers may be a very detrimental byproduct of its many gambling controversies finally being laid to rest.