Countless Streamers Impacted by Latest Twitch Gambling Ban

• Online casinos Blaze and Gamdom were singled out by the popular streaming network

• Latest ban comes one year after popular streamer was accused of bilking users out of hundreds of thousands of dollars to fuel gambling addiction

Twitch on Thursday explicitly will begin banning sponsorship and promotion of CS:GO skin gambling sites, specifically naming online casinos Blaze and Gamdom.

CS:GO skin promotion on the streaming platform is vital for many streamers.  Rival Kick appears to be capitalizing on the Twitch policy in recent months, encouraging some of the bigger name streamers to jump ship.

One of the biggest Twitch streamers has revealed how much money he earned from Stake.com streaming gambling games over the course of 16 months.  Tyler Faraz Niknam (AKA Trainwreck) claims to have made $360 million over a 16 month period promoting Stake.com via Twitch.  Stake.com had not verified these claims.  Kick is backed by Stake.com co-founders Bijan Tehrani, Ed Craven and is now promoted by Niknam. 

Twitch had previously banned some forms of gambling last year.

In a statement to Dexerto, Twitch said: “There’s been renewed interest in CSGO gambling broadly, so we’ve added clarifying language to our FAQ to make clear that promotion/sponsorship is not allowed on our service.”

Twitch claimed viewership of said content is down 75 percent.

The policy enforcement comes a year after certain streamers were accused of scamming users and other content creators out of thousands of dollars to fuel a gambling addiction.

Streamer ItsSliker confessed to bilking others out of hundreds of thousands of dollars to support his gambling addiction.

Pressure was placed on the streaming service to ban some forms of gambling.  They responded by banning dice, slots and roulette. 

Pokimane, Asmongold, and HasanAbi were among those who called for the ban on slots, despite ItsSliker's scam being tied exclusively to sports gambling.

Another Twitch streamer, Mizkif, also called for the ban.

“Our goal now, as it was last fall, is to protect our community, address predatory behavior, and make Twitch safer,” the company said Wednesday in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com