Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, who is thought of as the world’s bestCounter-Strike: Global Offensiveplayer, was banned fromTwitchthis week. The streamer was banned for using a homophobic slur during a July streaming session.
Fans ofCS:GOplayer s1mple may have gotten a surprise today when they tried to get onto his channel and found that it had disappeared. The reason being that the professional esports player and Twitch streamer had received a ban from Twitch after calling a friend a “pidor,” a Russian word that is a slur against gay men in an esports broadcast.
Esports journalist Rod “Slasher” Breslau tweeted that a source confirmed that s1mple had been suspended from Twitch for a week for the offense which took place in a July 29 broadcast of a FACEIT Pro League game. Breslau also shared a video that the community had made around the time of the broadcast, which joked that Twitch would soon ban s1mple for using the term.
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s1mple has responded to the ban, tweeting “Get Twitch Ban - Completed”. TheCS:GOplayer also tweeted a screenshot of the ban email, calling Twitch “a joke” and apologizing to his NaVi teammate Boombl4 for the “hatred.” Several of the esports pro’s fans have strong words to say about Twitch too, asking how Twitch could ban s1mple for this, but notAlinity, who was accused of animal abuse.
This isn’t the first ban to be compared to Alinity, as Twitch alsobanned a streamer for spamming emotesin other people’s chats. One of the biggest questions asked was how Twitch decides how a terms of service violation is severe enough to warrant a ban. There have been suggestions that Twitch gives some streamers special treatment and these are unlikely to go away soon because of such incidents.
Twitch is also having to fend off questions of how many more times it will upset the community before it triggers a mass exodus to Mixer. Fortnite streamerNinja left for Mixerin part because he wasn’t happy with Twitch and several responses to s1mple’s apology tweet asked when he’s joining Mixer or joked that Twitch would look foolish when everyone starts leaving the platform. Twitch does have rules to enforce but with discontent growing because of how Twitch enforces these rules, some will be wondering if things with the live streaming platform are going to change.
Source:Twitter - Rod Breslau, s1mple (1), (2)
