Twitch CEO Dan Clancy stands by the platform’s decision to restrict gambling streams to licensed, regulated sites, despite the fallout that’s driving top streamers to its new competitor, Kick.

Clancy reiterated the streaming company’s stance during a recent candid interview on TwitchTV with popular streamer and VTuber, Filian.

Twitch’s aim, he said, is not to end gambling streams but to restrict play on unregulated or illegal sites.

The streaming giant banned unregulated sites, Clancy told Filian, over their lax consumer protections and high integrity concerns.

The thing that was growing was these unregulated offshore gambling sites. For people that don’t understand, these are sites that there’s nobody overlooking to see, for example, what are the odds on the craps tables, are they tweaking them, do they change them, cause they’re not regulated.

The amount of money that was flowing, where our creators were building these communities and connections that they formed on Twitch, to drive people to these sites, it was a significant amount of money to a small number of creators. And we decided we didn’t think that was good for the community, so we banned the unregulated. In general, there is no problem with regulated, but we do have a problem with these unregulated sites.

Ban Focused on Crypto Sites like Stake, Roobet

Amazon-owned Twitch announced the gambling policy change in September 2022 and started enforcing the ban on Oct. 18.

Last fall, the company said another reason for the shift was to curb the bypass of another Twitch gambling rule that prohibited sharing referral codes or links to sites with slots, roulette, or dice games.

To do that required further action, Twitch shared in the announcement:

As such, starting October 18th we are further tightening our rules to also prohibit any streaming of listed sites that contain slots, roulette, and dice games and are unlicensed in the U.S. or other jurisdictions that offer consumer protections like deposit limits, waiting periods, and age verification systems.

Initially, Twitch singled out and prohibited four crypto-casinos. However, the streaming giant said more operators could be added to the block list.

As of publication, the list remains unchanged.

So far, the online gambling sites specifically banned by Twitch include:

Stake.com

Rollbit.com

Duelbits.com

Roobet.com

Notably, the ban includes all domain extensions, including free social casinos.

Sports betting, fantasy sports, and poker streams were unaffected by the policy tweak.

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