Twitch Shutting Down Crypto Gambling Live Streams
Twitch will ban crypto gambling on its site, the Amazon-owned live streaming platform announced Wednesday (Sept. 21).
According to a message posted on Twitter, Twitch will bar livestreaming gambling sites such as Stake.com, Rollbit and Duelbits.com which “aren’t licensed either in the US or other jurisdictions that provide sufficient consumer protection."
The ban goes into effect Oct. 18 and does not affect sites that involve sports betting, poker or fantasy sports.
“While we prohibit sharing links or referral codes to all sites that include slots, roulette or dice games, we’ve seen some people circumvent those rules and expose our community to potential harm,” the statement said.
The move comes in the wake of threats by popular Twitch personalities to stop streaming on the channel unless Twitch took action against gambling, according to media reports.
In a video last weekend, a streamer named Abraham Mohammed, known to fans as Sliker, admitted to scamming fans and other creators out of at least $200,000 to fund his gambling addiction. A number of high-profile streamers began fomenting a Christmas week boycott of Twitch to protest the platform’s policies on gambling streams.
Learn more: Some Gaming Companies Are Done Flirting With NFTs
The news follows reports from earlier this week that some gaming companies that had offered nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, to players as in-game rewards have concluded their virtual realms are better off without them.
One reason for backing off from NFT schemes is that prices for some NFTs and for crypto assets in general have dropped since the 2021 surge in NFT enthusiasm. Aside from that, gaming company executives say players just don’t seem to like them.
In a recent announcement detailing a new policy of not barring NFTs on its platform, Minecraft-producer Mojang pointed to several in-game NFT applications.
“Each of these uses of NFTs and other blockchain technologies creates digital ownership based on scarcity and exclusion, which does not align with Minecraft values of creative inclusion and playing together," the announcement said.