Summary
- Twitch has banned the promotion of gambling with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins, citing a desire to crack down on unregulated platforms and protect consumers.
- The ban extends to sponsored streams and potentially all skin gambling streams, not just those explicitly blacklisted by Twitch.
- Traditional sports betting, poker, and fantasy leagues are still allowed on Twitch, but the ban on skin gambling could impact the income of popular CS:GO streamers and lead to a potential exodus from the platform.
Twitch has quietly banned the practice of promoting gambling with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins and similar cosmetics. Many popular content creators like Pokimane have been calling on Twitch to ban gambling streams for a while now.
The Amazon-owned streaming service started its gambling pushback back in September 2022, when it introduced a ban on broadcasts featuring "unlicensed" betting content. The company said that the move was motivated by a desire to crack down on gambling platforms that aren't subject to U.S. Laws or otherwise offer insufficient consumer protections. One of the sites encompassed by the ban was Stake, the owner of Twitch rival Kick. And while some content creators welcomed the move, others like Trainwreck criticized Twitch over its gambling ban policies, positing that the new rules are inconsistent.
Following up on that move, Twitch has now also banned streams sponsored by any platform offering gambling with in-game skins, including those hosted on sites not explicitly blacklisted by the company. Twitch did so without any fanfare, having merely updated its Community Guidelines with a provision prohibiting any kind of skin gambling promotions. The wording of the newly updated policy suggests that the ban could even be targeting all skin gambling streams on Twitch and not just sponsored content.
In spite of these changes, the platform will continue to allow streams featuring traditional sports betting, poker, and fantasy leagues, as per the latest version of its Community Guidelines. Streams promoting betting with cosmetics such as CS:GO skins have long been a controversial topic among Twitch audiences and beyond. While some feel this sort of content should be carefully regulated and, at worst, hosted alongside disclaimers warning about the dangers of gambling addiction, others want it banned outright, opining that any such streams encourage gambling among minors.
Many of the most popular Counter-Strike: Global Offensive streamers on Twitch have historically relied on gambling sponsorships for monetizing their broadcasts. An outright ban on all such content could hence put a significant dent in their income, possibly to the point of prompting a mass exodus from the platform.
While Kick still appears happy to host streamers unhappy with almost any of its rival's policies, the fact that Twitch's biggest competitor is owned by a betting company does not necessarily mean it's placing gambling content front and center. On the contrary, a June 30 update to the service saw Kick significantly limit its users' exposure to gambling streams. The company explained that it wanted to hide such broadcasts from anyone who hasn't expressed an explicit interest in this sort of content by directly following gambling streamers.