Twitch Bans Gambling Referral Codes and Affiliate Links

Recent months have seen a great deal of debate over whether Twitch should allow gambling content on its platform. Now the company has decided that it will be restricting the promotions of gambling by its creators.

The company shared a Creator Update earlier this week in which it announced that it will be prohibiting links and referral codes to gambling websites. The aim is to reduce harm and fraudulent activity, but it also means that creators can no longer benefit from affiliate schemes.

To prevent harm and scams created by questionable gambling services that sponsor content on Twitch, we will prohibit sharing links and/or referral codes to sites that offer slots, roulette, or dice games. We will continue to monitor gambling-related content and update our approach as needed. To give you time to remove this content from your channel, enforcement will be delayed until August 17, 2021.

Over the last few weeks, a number of Twitch’s biggest streamers, such as Mizkif, Hassan, and Alinity, came out against gambling content and claimed that it should be banned altogether. While the platform has not gone that far, the removal of affiliate links and codes will make the content far less attractive to creators.

In June, Slovakia took the step of banning Twitch entirely after a creator from the region broadcast themselves playing poker illegally. This led to creators asking Twitch to take action to remove gambling content from the platform entirely as they were worried it could have negative repercussions for all.

Twitch is likely to keep monitoring the situation, and there could be further changes in the future.

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