The assertion made by a Twitch streamer that he defrauded people out of more than $200,000 in order to fund his gambling habit has sparked outrage among users of the streaming site and prompted a response from the company that operates the platform this week.
Abraham Mohammed, better known as the streamer Sliker, disclosed via his stream on Saturday that he received money from Twitch viewers and other streamers after claiming he needed to borrow it to escape financial troubles, as reported by Kotaku. Mohammed goes by the name Sliker.
According to the website, he later admitted that his true intention was to spend the money to support an addiction to gambling while playing the video game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Following the disclosure, prominent streamers, such as Devin Nash, Pokimane, and Mizkif, expressed their support for a planned boycott that would take place during the week leading up to Christmas and would ask Twitch to issue a statement on gambling streams and sponsorships.
According to Kotaku’s reporting, content makers for Twitch have argued that the platform’s gambling features enable “wealthy creators to promote hazardous content to young, impressionable viewers.”
Twitch has decided to take action in response to the outcry and the risk of a boycott by streamers by declaring its intention to prohibit the streaming of specific gambling websites on its network.
An update on gambling on Twitch. pic.twitter.com/lckNTY9Edo
— Twitch (@Twitch) September 20, 2022
In a tweet published on Tuesday, the platform announced its intention to restrict sites that “aren’t licenced either in the United States or other jurisdictions that provide proper consumer protection.” These sites include those that offer slot machines, roulette, and dice games.
The new Twitch policy will go into effect on October 18th, according to the company’s schedule.
Twitch has said that it intends to prohibit its users from streaming content from websites such as Duelbits.com, Rollbit.com, Stake.com, and Roobet.com. In the future, the company may identify additional websites as violators.
Twitch has stated that the policy change will not have an effect on gambling on sports, fantasy sports, or poker.
Following the change in policy on Tuesday, streamers such as Pokimane, who amassed more than 312,000 likes in support of a prohibition on gambling streams, stated “we did it y’all.”
In a discussion on Twitter, Nash highlighted that the restriction was “NOT a gambling prohibition,” and he noted that the policy change leaves room for there to be gambling on Twitch even after it has been implemented.
The 18th of October is the date on which we will need to observe the full effects of this policy amendment. According to Nash’s writing, “this isn’t even close to being a ban on luck-based gambling in its current wording.”
Due to the fact that Twitch appears to only react to extreme amounts of pressure, it is imperative that we hold them accountable as a platform to behave ethically.