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Twitch prides itself on abiding by third-party terms of service and user agreements. Given Valve's statements earlier this week about Counter-Strike: Global Offensive gambling sites, it seems as though people streaming themselves gambling for skins may be an endangered species now. Twitch issued a reminder that broadcasters are not permitted to stream content "that breaks the terms of service or user agreements of third-parties."Today Valve released an announcement clarifying the intended use of Steam’s trading system and OpenID API. Valve specifically notes that using “the OpenID API and making the same web calls as Steam users to run a gambling business is not allowed by our API nor our user agreements.”
As a reminder, per Twitch’s Terms of Service, broadcasters are not permitted to stream content that breaks the terms of service or user agreements of third-parties. As such, content in which the broadcaster uses or promotes services that violate Valve’s stated restrictions is prohibited on Twitch. Our Rules of Conduct lists other examples such as playing pirated games and playing on unauthorized private servers.
As a reminder, per Twitch’s Terms of Service, broadcasters are not permitted to stream content that breaks the terms of service or user agreements of third-parties. As such, content in which the broadcaster uses or promotes services that violate Valve’s stated restrictions is prohibited on Twitch. Our Rules of Conduct lists other examples such as playing pirated games and playing on unauthorized private servers.
That is to say, you might actually start to see people playing Counter-Strike in the top spots of the Global Offensive Twitch category instead of those annoying gambling streams. I would say that I'm sad to hear this news, but I would be lying.
Of course, with the way Twitch seems to play favorites with their larger streamers, it will be interesting to see if the rules are actually enforced.
Wished Twitch would just admit video games is a restrictive scope, and that they shouldn't bother having rules against other creative means to entertain the public. I think art is fine, cooking/eating is fine, chatting is fine, talk shows is fine, music from artists who granted written permission is fine, etc. etc. etc. Even excessive drinking should've been fine, considering I'm seeing drinking contests on Twitch (Mario Kart 8 Don't Drink and Drive at SGC is still on the archives of ScrewAttack, and Brentalfloss who was competing clearly said he is likely going to puke from drinking so much beer, just saying). Having the TOS be SELECTIVELY enforced depending on how large your audience is, is disgustingly hypocritical. Either ban it all and burn those books and piss off big-time streamers and charities (yes charities break a LOT of rules on the TOS), or change your TOS to be a lot more flexible and a lot more realistic to how people really stream. Don't lie to yourselves. This isn't just about streaming video games. We have other interests too.
Also copying cheering from porn sites is........................ A very pathetic thing to research and develop (I will admit I've never watched a porn livestream, so I never knew web chats had this sort of thing until everybody kept making the comparisons). Couldn't you guys focus on making more stable connections that doesn't cause random buffering, or reduce the hand-wave latency, or provide better moderation tools, or allow smaller streamers to have options that will let them earn their way to getting transcoding options, or better feedback forums, or plan out how to separate large-scale events (League of Legends Championships) from other streams to avoid slowing the world down, or fix the export to YouTube, or allow better archiving options that doesn't cause our fun memories to be deleted so soon for non-partner streamers, or............. Ah screw it, just give whatever League of Legends streamers want. We're too stupid to know a bad idea when we see one. Take my money and give me my animated icon.