07:16
22 Sep
Poker has had a lucky escape after being given an exemption in the upcoming ban on gambling on Twitch. The last few days have been full of the news that many prominent streamers were threatening a boycott following news that “ItsSliker” admitted to scamming his followers in order to gamble.
The Amazon-owned site took quick action and following a discussion decided to implement a ban of most gambling types, including slots, roulette and unlicensed dice games.
Lucky Escape
The last couple of days saw a couple of well-known poker streamers doing their bit to raise awareness that poker is a skill game where players battle each other rather than dumping money to the house at a steady rate.
PokerStars Team Pro Fintan hand wrote:
“I haven’t really caught up with the drama on Twitch surrounding gambling. Seeing a lot of calls for gambling on Twitch to be banned. I would like to think, given we are in a different category, Poker won’t fall under the same blanket term. It’s so much different than slots.”
And Jaime Staples made a couple of short clips on his Twitter account explaining the differences between out-and-out gambling and poker.
Why Did Gambling Get Banned on Twitch?
Although this recent controversy was the catalyst for Twitch to act, this discussion has been ongoing for some months now. The prevalence of streamers playing a game like slots was encouraging players to gamble in a way that was seen as unethical.
Many of these streamers had sponsorship deals with online casinos and so were never losing any of their own money. There was also the possibility that the games were rigged in favour of these players to make them appear more profitable than the reality.
A Twitch spokesperson told Bloomberg:
“We take any potential harm to our community extremely seriously. While gambling content represents a very small fraction of the content streamed on Twitch, we monitor it closely to ensure our approach mitigates potential harm to our global community.”
Popular streamer Asmongold said that he would never do a sponsored gambling stream but was wrong when he predicted that no action would be taken due to the growing acceptance of the hobby.
“I don’t think Twitch will ban gambling It’s extremely pervasive and more socially acceptable than ever in the US The only thing that will make it stop is if people start killing themselves and/or there’s a mass media campaign against it that reaches advertisers”
He was one of a group of streamers that threatened to boycott the platform during Christmas week to hurt Twitch in the pocket due to reduced advertising.
As of today, poker, sports betting, and fantasy sports have all dodged the ban but Twitch did add in its statement that they would be monitoring the situation moving forward.