Twitch expands its gambling ban, as viewership drops by 75%

Twitch, the Amazon-owned streaming platform that was bought for nearly $1bn, has expanded its prohibition on gambling promotions. Since October 2022, the company has been actively working to restrict the reach of gambling advertisements and promotions on its platform, citing concerns about consumer safety, and the incident involving a streamer who had promoted gambling to fuel their own addiction.

In light of those events, Twitch decided to roll out its gambling ban that prohibits streamers from interacting with gambling websites that do not hold licenses in the United States, or "other jurisdictions." The latest expansion of this ban, shared by Twitch on Twitter and reflected in its Community Guidelines, makes several important changes.

Notably, Twitch is no longer allowing the promotion or sponsorship of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins. The change is subtle – but important. As some casinos have been prohibited, content creators started turning to alternative ways of promoting gambling products with Counter-Strike skin gambling websites one of those.

However, skin gambling is not allowed and websites that promote skin gambling are usually considered untrustworthy. Valve, the publisher and developer of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, faced a class-action lawsuit by angered parents whose children had spent thousands of dollars on skins, which forced the developer to issue a cease and desist letter in 2016 against those websites and prohibit the trading and gambling with skins, threatening legal course against offenders.

The latest expansion of the platform’s gambling ban also includes the introduction of more domains that are now officially prohibited to stream. The full list is reflected in the Community Guidelines. The decision to ban CS:GO skin gambling comes after the platform confirmed that it had observed some "new trends" suggesting that content creators keen to promote gambling on Twitch had been coming up with alternative solutions that aren’t on the Community Guidelines.

Meanwhile, since the ban was rolled in last October, the website has seen gambling viewership drop by 75%, which demonstrates the success of the measure. Not everyone has been happy with the new status quo, however, with a number of prominent content creators leaving the platform en masse and switching it up for Kick, a rival platform that offers a 95-5 revenue splitting model and a more liberal take on gambling products.

Some of Twitch’s biggest stars have left the platform for Kick, including xQc, a prominent gambling streamer himself.

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