Twitch supposedly banning and punishing streamers by meticulously enforcing multistreaming guidelines

In 2023, Twitch allowed multistreaming to any platform. This feature permits streamers to broadcast on multiple websites simultaneously. This trend of multistreaming has grown over the years, and recently, Twitch's premier political commentator, Asmongold, announced his decision to start multistreaming on Kick, disregarding that it is one of the Amazon-owned service's prime competitors.

On June 18, a report from @Awk20000 on X indicated that Twitch is supposedly suspending streamers by strategically using their simulcasting Terms of Service (ToS).

For context, the platform's guidelines on this matter indicate that streamers are not encouraged to lower their Twitch stream quality, share links for viewers to leave Twitch mid-stream, and use tools that merge chats or features from other platforms into their Twitch stream. @Awk20000's post displayed streamer Nutty's difficulties with the guidelines surrounding multisreaming after being hit with a suspension:

"I'll take the suspension, but these guidelines are unbelievably stupid and need to be rewritten... How tf does acknowledging other platforms on stream 'exclude or limit the Twitch community?'."

Initially, Nutty believed that the 24-hour suspension was due to his "multichat" overlay, which is an interface that displays and combines messages from viewers tuned in across multiple platforms. Later on, though, the streamer changed his stance and claimed that the ban was because he acknowledged donations from a TikTok livestream happening simultaneously:

"I actually think this is the real reason I got banned. I was asking my chat to send me TikTok gifts in the middle of my stream to test an alert, which is technically not allowed. If someone gives us a $1,000 dono on YouTube, are we just supposed to pretend it didn't happen?!"

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"The rules they have are a complete joke": Nutty goes off on Twitch after his multistreaming-related ban

Soon after the ban, Nutty released a 12-minute video discussing Twitch's multistreaming ToS, calling the guidelines "vague":

"Some of the rules they have are a complete joke. If you actually read the Terms of Service, they've made it so vague that they can pretty much ban most people that are streaming on Twitch right now." (Timestamp - 1:04)

The first guideline on multistreaming requires creators to "ensure that the quality of Twitch users’ experience of your Simulcast is, at a minimum, no less than the experience on other platforms or services." In response to this, Nutty claimed that the platform is being "insecure":

"What this means is you have to stream at the same quality to all platforms or Twitch has to be the highest quality. So you can't stream on 4K on YouTube but 720p on Twitch, for example. That's fine... I think it's bulls**t and shows some insecurity on Twitch's end, but it's fine..." (Timestamp - 1:34)

Notably, he claimed that "dozens of streamers" received warnings for linking their Kick channels:

"I got tipped off that Twitch actually might be cracking down on people that have links to their Kick channel in their Twitch panels... supposedly dozens of streamers last week got a warning from Twitch." (Timestamp - 3:40)

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In other news, streamer Tectone was hit with a third Twitch ban and claimed that the platform's situation is even worse than he expected.

Edited by Ritoban "Veloxi" Paul