The American Zepla is one of the biggest streamers of the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV. Her account was apparently mistakenly suspended by Twitch – a mistake that almost cost her her followers.
This is Zepla: Zepla has dedicated herself to the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV and shows it almost exclusively on her Twitch channel. She is considered a friendly and helpful streamer who likes to give her viewers tips on the game.
In this way, she has built a community of 243,000 followers on Twitch, with around 2,000 people watching her on average (via sullygnome).
Zepla is passionately playing Final Fantasy XIV and also likes to wear bunny ears in her streams, which are a reference to her character, a Viera bunny girl. You can see what else you need to know about the MMORPG in the video.
Zepla loses thousands of followers due to ban
This ban is about: On September 15, the suspension of Twitch partner Zepla was announced via the Twitter account StreamerBans. After exactly 1 hour, 8 minutes, and 36 seconds, the account was unlocked, but the damage had already been done.
These were the consequences of the ban: Zepla initially started her next stream unaware of anything. But her viewers pointed out to her that they had to follow her again. Zepla then realized that Twitch had deleted more than 150,000 of her followers.
This was Zepla’s reaction: The streamer shared her unblocking on Twitter and announced the deletion of her followers. She called it “devastating” and demanded answers from Twitch. Especially incomprehensible for the streamer: She hadn’t streamed at all in the days leading up to the ban.
Twitch bans streamer for alleged impersonation
This is behind the ban: Shortly after the announcement of her suspension and unblocking, Zepla shared a message from Twitch stating that the reason for the ban was impersonation. Such a suspension can be received if one pretends to be another streamer or a Twitch employee.
Due to the alleged severity of the offense, the duration of the ban was described as indefinite. It apparently turned out to be a misunderstanding, as Zepla had indeed struggled with impersonators for years who tried to deceive her viewers with phishing links.
Zepla had already addressed this issue in a YouTube video in 2019. Now it seems that Twitch accidentally suspended Zepla’s real account while trying to combat the impersonators. She cannot afford this nonsense at the moment, according to Zepla (via Twitter).
Fans also suspect that the sudden change of location of the streamer could have raised suspicions at Twitch. Because Zepla had recently left her adopted home, Ukraine.
This is the current status: However, many users assured that the followers in such cases can usually be restored.
Actually, the follower count on Zepla’s Twitch channel is now stated to be 245,000, with her channel showing an increase of 170,000 followers in the last 3 days (via sullygnome). However, it remains unclear whether all subscriptions have also been restored.
At least it seems that Zepla has not lost her sense of humor: The streamer joked that she was probably banned because she simply looked too much like herself. Maybe she is also an impersonator of herself, as she constantly changes (via Twitter).
The streaming platform Twitch has recently faced criticism for its ban policy. Because streamers are not always able to understand the reasons for their suspensions.
Especially for some smaller full-time streamers, this can be existentially threatening, as they depend on the income. The VTuber Shylily also spoke about this issue after her ban.
