Twitch instantly bans streamer after joking about needing to “go away for a long time”
A Twitch streamer says the Amazon-owned platform apologized after he was instantly hit with a 30-day ban moments after he joked about needing to “go away.”
Twitch’s ban system has come under fire a lot over the years, with certain infractions like distracted driving resulting in short suspensions while other violations have led to longer bans.
That was the case on July 31 after streamer ‘SmaK’ was suddenly hit with a month-long ban for a joke he made on stream, prompting some backlash towards the purple livestream site.
While the matter has since been resolved, the ban itself had viewers and other creators quite baffled.
Streamer says Twitch apologized for random 30-day ban
During a broadcast, SmaK was reading odd chat messages out loud when he started to joke about not wanting to stream anymore.
“I need to not exist in this world anymore,” he said. “I need to go away for a long time. The amount of crazy sh*t I’m seeing and reading and hearing every day, I don’t know if I can handle it anymore.”
The joke clearly didn’t land as, according to SmaK, he was hit with a ban immediately after.
“So this is an automated system and likely to happen to others in the future for various things said,” he suggested on X.
XOther streamers and creators were just as confused.
“Dude this is so crazy, I get what they’re thinking but you have to be extremely tone deaf to act on this,” one replied.
“Considering what some of the top streamers have gotten away with for 24h bans, this has to be a mistake,” another chimed in.
“There’s no way you were banned for this,” remarked major streaming star NICKMERCS.
As the clip began to spread, SmaK revealed he was unbanned and that Twitch even apologized for the mishap.
According to the streamer, Twitch admitted it had made a mistake, though it’s unclear what caused the ban to begin with.
SmaK was able to resume streaming on Friday and noted that he didn’t expect to receive an apology from the platform, adding that the whole ordeal was confusing because he talks about killing himself in video games every single day.
While bans aren’t uncommon, apologies from Twitch are. Back in 2019, the platform apologized after mistakenly banning streamer ‘Viperous’, believing she had used a racial slur on stream, before it was later revealed she had actually said “nerd”.
Usernames have also resulted in incorrect bans. In 2023, a Serbian streamer who, at the time, went by ‘Pajja’, was banned because their name was offensive in Spanish.
