Twitch officially bans gambling

The top live streaming platform in the world will eventually ban one of its most popular categories after outcry to do so from its top talent.

Twitch is truly an one-of-a-kind place where you can literally watch anything - even people spend loads of money gambling.

The Amazon-owned platform, where anyone can post themselves doing almost anything in real-time, saw more than 23 billion hours watched in 2021.
The platform's "Slots" category alone sees more than 50,000 people watching Twitch celebrities play games of chance at any given time.

Twitch has recently made an announcement of its plans to formally ban gambling on the platform - almost.

Twitch will prohibit streamers from using popular gambling sites that "aren't licensed either in the US or other jurisdictions that provide sufficient consumer protection".
Sports betting, fantasy sports, and poker will still be permitted.

The vapid rise of gambling on Twitch has been wildly controversial, with many heralding this drastic action from management.

Seeing their favourite streamers winning big has inspired many viewers to try to do the same, leading to severe and unrecoverable losses.
This also comes at a time where streamers have been reportedly scammed out of thousands of dollars from a prominent Twitch gambler.

On the other hand, some see this ban as both an overreaction a point of hypocrisy.

Some say that the ban should be focused on some individual streamers who promise this "fake reality" and incentivize the use of promo codes that force viewers to gamble.
Others say that Twitch has some other "unsavoury" categories that should warrant a similar response - but haven't.

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