Gambling Ban on Twitch Drops Viewership by 75%
The tightening of restrictions on gambling advertising was made by Twitch, the Amazon platform. Since October 2022, active efforts have been made to reduce the presence of gambling advertising for consumer safety reasons. An incident in which a streamer promoted gambling for fuel led to Twitch's decision to issue a ban. This prohibits streamers from interacting with gambling websites without licenses in the US or other jurisdictions.
The recently announced extension of the ban was posted on Twitter and in the Twitch Community Guidelines. Major changes affect the advertising or sponsorship of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins. This subtle adjustment affects casinos that were looking for alternative ways to promote gambling products, including Counter-Strike skin gambling websites.
However, it should be noted that skin gambling is generally not allowed. Websites that promote such gambling are also often considered unreliable. Valve, the publisher and developer of Counter-Strike, was forced to take action against these websites in 2016 in order to stop skin trading and gambling because of class action lawsuits filed by concerned parents.
Gambling on Twitch before the end
Additional domains are also part of the platform's recent expansion of its gambling ban, where streaming is officially banned. The full list is available in the community. The decision to ban the promotion of CS:GO skin gambling comes after Twitch realized that some content creators were finding alternative ways to promote gambling. These are not yet covered in the guidelines and have opened up gaps.
The introduction of the ban in October last year resulted in a 75% drop in gambling visitors on the platform. However, not everyone was happy with this change. Some prominent content creators have left the platform and switched to rival platform Kick, which offers more generous profit sharing and a casual stance on gambling products. Some of the most well-known Twitch stars, including xQc, himself a well-known gambling streamer, have also made the move to platform kick .
