xQc lashes out at Twitch over Neymar gambling stream

Gambling on Twitch isn't technically banned, but it is heavily restricted

Top Twitch streamer xQc has taken a swipe at Twitch’s content moderation after being alerted to a gambling stream by soccer superstar Neymar. It comes after years of crackdowns on gambling content on the Amazon-owned streaming platform, which have affected multiple high-profile streamers and caused many to leave altogether.

xQc’s rant started after his Twitch chat pointed him towards Neymar’s stream while he was making attempts at the Minecraft speedrun record. Neymar streamed himself gambling thousands of dollars in the online casino Blaze, in what xQc thinks is a violation of Twitch’s gambling guidelines.

Twitch’s community guidelines state that the company does not allow certain gambling websites to be streamed on Twitch. It lists a specific set of websites explicitly banned, including Stake, Rollbit, and Roobet, all of which saw massive attention on Twitch prior to being banned.

Twitch says it considers “many factors” in determining which websites should be banned, including if the site has safety protections and age verification. While Twitch doesn’t specifically list Blaze as one of its banned websites, the content on the gambling site is very similar to sites that have been banned.

xQc nonetheless believes that Twitch is playing favorites by allowing Neymar to stream himself gambling while others have been banned or suspended for it.

“This seems like pick and choose bullshit,” xQc said in the stream, “I don’t want to be some anti-Twitch bandwagoner, but this is some pretty big pick and choose dogshit based on the current outrage situation to feed the morons.”

According to Dexerto, xQc went on to say that there was no reason to allow this kind of content, and that if anyone else, like him or Trainwreckstv, were to do the same, they would be immediately banned.

That hasn’t stopped xQc from gambling, however. The streamer lost over $650,000 on a World Cup soccer bet in December, after betting big on France to win the finals. That, obviously, did not happen, and xQc lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on – you guessed it – Stake.

The ban of Stake was particularly damning for some streamers, like Trainwreckstv, who’d made a living gambling on the site, and many moved away from Twitch entirely following its ban. Many moved over to Kick, a streaming website owned and operated by Stake’s leadership, although the two entities are not officially affiliated.

Whether Neymar will face any penalties for gambling on stream is still unknown, but given there are currently hundreds of gambling streams on Twitch at any given time, it seems pretty unlikely.