Since the invention of the Game Shark, there have been gamers that will do anything, including cheat, to win a game. There are many ways to cheat at a game, and one of the latest methods, stream sniping, has had some negative effects for the victim, and not just in the case of losing the game.
Stream sniping involves the cheater watching someone's Livestream on Twitch while playing in the same game they're streaming from. It's essentially "screen watching" from the days of GoldenEye but upgraded for the 21st century. In this example, it's League of Legends.
This is seen as unfair, and streamers tend to try and ban users that do this from their channel. Unfortunately for Twitch streamer Ataras, this simple fix has landed him in some unintended hot water: a 14-day suspension. In a tweet posted on November 25, Ataras told Twitch Support that he banned a stream sniper from his stream of League of Legends and that the user made false accounts to report his channel, which landed him with the unfounded suspension. He even attached a Discord message where the sniper admitted to their underhanded offense.
Ataras later posted a video about the stream sniper (warning: some strong language), accounting the call he had with him on Discord.
“This is the guy who got me suspended,” the streamer wrote. “He threatened to report me again and I’m scared man. If I already got suspended the first time when I didn’t break any rules, how do I know it won’t happen again?”
The sniper simply stated that he wouldn't report the streamer again if he would just play with him again, stating "I just want to have friends, man."
Strange friend-making methods aside, this form of cheating gives an obvious advantage to the offending party and it is well within the streamer's right to ban them. While not as bad as other Twitch deviance such as Swatting, it's still clearly cheating, and thus unacceptable in most streaming circles. The real failure here is that the offending party can just make spoof accounts and spam reports on the innocent streamer and get them suspended for doing nothing wrong. It's likely an automatic system that's only reviewed after a complaint is filed by the banned party, making them seem just as guilty as a real offense. Twitch isn't above lifting bans and publicly apologizing for them, but the loss of viewership and potentially even monetary loss is pressing for some streamers.
Obviously, Twitch is a very populated website. Simply filing through each and every report manually is a pretty absurd suggestion to make, especially when many of them are false reports, as seen with the multiple ones sent about Ataras by one person with multiple accounts. On the other hand, getting automatically suspended and having to fight and wait to get cleared is unfair, especially when the charges are fake. There's also the issue of people being banned for silly reasons like saying "nerd" and it being upheld.
The answer lies somewhere in the middle, but Twitch and other sites of its kind have yet to find it. Until then, users are left hoping it doesn't happen to them. This may seem easy, but sometimes even the most random thing will get Twitch streamers suspended. Many streamers have been looking at other streaming services to move to, although the repercussions of that have yet to be seen.
League of Legends is available now for PC.
Source: Dexerto