Twitch Bans PewDiePie: What It Means for the Gaming Community
A remarkable and unforeseen occurrence has occurred, with Twitch, an organization owned by Amazon, banning the renowned content creator and web star, PewDiePie. This decision by Twitch is particularly remarkable when you consider the fact that PewDiePie has an immense following of more than 111 million subscribers on YouTube and he is one of the most prosperous and influential creators on the web. [Source: Gamerant.com]
PewDiePie attained fame when he began to upload Let’s Play videos of various games to YouTube, which allowed him to share his responses to action and horror games with millions of people around the world. Despite having previously streamed on Twitch and receiving over 1.5 million followers, his channel had been dormant for a couple of years. Thus, it astonished the online community when a peculiar video started playing on PewDiePie’s Twitch channel on March 21st, which was the Trailer Park Boys series.
❌ Twitch Partner "PewDiePie" has been banned! ❌https://t.co/ylwghbE8X2#twitch #ban #firstban #partner #twitchpartner 6⃣
— StreamerBans (@StreamerBans) May 9, 2023
A stream titled “PewDiePie Infinity” was broadcast on PewDiePie’s Twitch channel after the debunking of a hack rumor featuring an endless loop of his past videos. Due to the fact that the YouTuber had uploaded over 3,000 hours of content, this loop was able to captivate viewers who were then able to communicate their thoughts in the live chat. Unfortunately, on May 9, Twitch decided to ban PewDiePie’s Twitch channel without providing any sort of clarification, which is a common practice for them.
The banning of PewDiePie from Twitch has left viewers uncertain as to why the act was done. Twitch has not given an explanation, though many have speculated it could have been related to the “bridge incident” which took place during a live stream of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds in September 2017 when PewDiePie almost used a racial slur.
Different hypotheses have been brought forward in order to explain the ban placed on PewDiePie. One user argued that it could be related to Twitch’s branded content policy as PewDiePie’s Twitch channel was setting up automated streams of his YouTube videos, which could have been in violation of Twitch’s terms of service since YouTube’s content regulations are more lenient than Twitch’s. Another user voiced their discontent with Twitch’s decision, as they thought Twitch had purchased PewDiePie’s clips just to prohibit him, which was seen as a sign of Twitch’s poor management.
At the present moment, PewDiePie has yet to address his banning from Twitch. It is uncertain if he will provide any insight into why he was blocked or how long it will last.