Scandals shake Twitch

From assault allegations to gambling scams, there’s never a dull moment

Twitch is the world’s largest video game live-streaming platform. It was launched in 2011 and acquired by Amazon in 2014 for $970 million. It’s incredibly popular and hosts some of the world’s biggest streamers.

In the last couple of weeks or so, a lot has been happening on Twitch, and I mean a lot. Some of the biggest creators are being put on blast, and Twitch has been making major policy changes that could lead to its top creators leaving the platform.

All of the issues started during ShitCamp. ShitCamp is an event hosted by popular streamer QTCinderella where several creators meet up and make content over a series of days. It was announced on August 29, 2022, and not everyone was looking forward to it. Last year at the first ShitCamp, a highlight for viewers was streamer SodaPoppin. Soda was not able to make it to this year’s ShitCamp, and people were upset about it. But, the replacement this year was xQc.

xQc is one of the biggest streamers on Twitch. He has a huge audience. xQc decided not to go to ShitCamp the day before, and said it was because “Soda gone and all, dont [sic] feel like it / its [sic] a lot of people, i [sic] need someone like soda to run good stuff.” With Soda not going and now xQc not going, things weren’t looking great for ShitCamp, but the event ended up going well. Except for ERobb.

ERobb is a large content creator who was invited to ShitCamp and, while there, he made a joke in his chat to a viewer that when he went to TwitchCon, he would beat up this viewer. This comment got ERobb banned from Twitch for seven days. Then, Twitch changed the ban from seven days to 30 days. Many people saw this ban as having no basis because ERobb was joking, and the viewer knew that. 

The problems with xQc kept going when Soda said on a podcast that he told xQc months before ShitCamp that he wasn’t going. When xQc saw that clip of the podcast, he said that he had to deal with personal matters. This ended up being about his girlfriend and fellow streamer, Adept. Then Adept saw that clip of xQc saying there were personal matters, which led to Adept and xQc breaking up very publicly and even going live and having a very personal conversation that led to Adept saying “you are not a victim here, you have never been a victim.”

While this was happening, another streamer named ItsSliker, completely unrelated to ShitCamp, was revealed to be a scammer with a gambling addiction. Sliker scammed more than 50 people out of more than $380,000, including one viewer who was going through chemotherapy, so he could pay for his gambling addiction.

As a result of Sliker’s scamming coming out, people started campaigning for Twitch to ban gambling on the platform. In the last several months many popular streamers have been getting huge sponsorships to gamble on their streams. A couple of popular streamers tweeted out “like if Twitch should ban gambling,” which led to something else.

One of the streamers that tweeted that was Mizkif, who is a huge streamer on Twitch. Mizkif replied to a streamer called Trainwreck who was talking about gambling on Twitch, saying that he should get banned for something he did, and Trainwreck responded to Mizkif saying “are you going to send [two other streamers] to railroad and blackmail me like you did those girls to cover up all those sexual assaults.”

Trainwreck was referring to a streamer called CrazySlick (a different Slick) who is close friends with Mizkif. Over a year ago, a streamer named Adrianah Lee accused CrazySlick of inappropriately touching her while she was passed out drunk. Slick said that he was checking her pulse, but people who were there said it was inappropriate. Adrianah posted a statement on Twitter shortly after about the situation, and it died out quickly.

Part of this was that Mizkif sent two streamers to Adriannah to make sure the post didn’t paint Slick in too bad of a light. CrazySlick continued afterwards to be inappropriately sexual with women through private messages and faced almost no consequences at the time for what he did to Adrianah. A clip surfaced of Mizkif saying that no one stopped hanging out with Slick because of what he did to Adrianah. He didn’t lose any friends from it.

Mizkif said that at worst what Slick did was sexual harassment, and not a big deal. Adrianah has stated recently that she did not realize that what Slick did was sexual assault until very recently, and she spoke about how the assault has affected her during another stream. If you want more about Adrianah specifically, I would recommend checking out some of the things that she has said.

Following this, another streamer named IcePoseidon (who has his own issues) published DM’s between him and Mizkif from 2018 and 2019 that were full of Mizkif saying slurs – a lot of slurs. Mizkif released an apology on September 21, but spelled Adrianah’s name wrong in it.

On September 20, as a response to what happened with Sliker, Twitch updated their gambling policy to ban slots, roulette, dice games, and most of the websites that big streamers were using to gamble.

Banning gambling was a huge win for Twitch and everyone was super stoked, but then Twitch made another decision that was not received as well. Twitch announced that they were changing how they paid their streamers.

On Twitch, larger streamers have a 70/30 pay cut with Twitch. They get 70 per cent and Twitch gets 30 per cent. Smaller creators are on a 50/50 split with Twitch. Twitch said that big streamers will keep their 70/30 split for the first $100,000 they make, and then go down to the 50/50. Twitch claims that the reason they’re changing its pay is that it’s unfair for smaller streamers that big streamers get a 70/30, and that it is very expensive for them to be hosted on Amazon’s servers and they need money for that.

In the midst of all of this are the chess scandals happening. Hans Niemann is a chess player and a Twitch streamer who recently faced Magnus Carlsen, the world’s best chess player, and won. When Niemann and Carlsen faced off again, Carlsen quit part way through the match. People have been claiming that Niemann cheated, but there’s been no proof of this. Niemann has vehemently denied the cheating allegations.