Twitch Bans Sponsorship and Promotion of CS:GO Skin Gambling Sites
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Twitch, the Amazon-owned streaming platform, has implemented a new rule that explicitly prohibits the sponsorship and promotion of CS:GO skin gambling sites. This decision is set to have a significant impact on the sponsorships of numerous CS:GO streamers.
CS:GO skin gambling is a highly profitable industry, with streamers and YouTubers often signing lucrative deals with gambling sites. These content creators frequently use the gambling sites during their streams and share affiliate codes and deals with their viewers.
Although this practice is generally frowned upon, it has become the norm even for the biggest streamers and professional players. Many current and former professional players actively promote skin gambling sites, and even G2 Esports itself is sponsored by CS:GORoll, one of the most popular sites in the space.
Despite being in violation of Twitch’s terms of service, enforcement of this rule has been sporadic in the past. However, it appears that this may change.
Twitch has now explicitly mentioned in its community guidelines that sponsorship and promotion of skins gambling, specifically for CS:GO skins, is prohibited. This addition to the guidelines may have occurred recently and was not present in the guidelines at the time of a popular YouTube video that reported 75% of the top 300 CS:GO streamers on Twitch had skin gambling sponsors.
It remains to be seen how strictly Twitch will enforce this rule. In the existing community guidelines, promotion of unregulated gambling sites, including many skin gambling sites, was already prohibited. However, no streamers have faced bans for promoting these sites, and many are currently still promoting skin gambling on their channels.
Twitch has yet to provide any official comments on this matter. Valve, the publisher of CS:GO, has also taken actions against skin gambling by banning traders who supply items to these gambling sites.
