The role-playing scene in GTA 5 has been the richest breeding ground for a quick career on Twitch for several years. Newcomers have built a large following there and made a lot of money within just a few months. But because of the spicy content of GTA 5, the ban is not far away. Twitch knows no friends here and even bans the biggest streamers on the platform, like Kai Cenat, who went too far with ‘erotic role play’.
Why is GTA 5 so lucrative on Twitch?
- GTA 5 Online, the multiplayer game from 2013, serves as the basis for role-playing servers for GTA 5, such as ‘NoPixel’. Streamers play a character they’ve created and interact with the game and other streamers who are also playing their character.
- Many streamers play as ‘criminals’ in GTA 5 – while other streamers play as police officers chasing them. By constantly interacting with other streamers and their viewers, even a small streamer can reach new people and draw attention to themselves.
- Through this unique form of role play, GTA 5 acts as a career turbo. Synergy effects arise: One could see similar phenomena in 4-player groups in Fortnite 2018 and during the pandemic with ‘Among Us’ 2021. Groups of streamers interact with each other and grow much faster this way than any single streamer could on their own.
These synergy effects are the foundation of success for many stars who were unknown 4 or 5 years ago, built a large reach on Twitch, and are now cashing in on YouTube.
How does this affect it? GTA 5 has allowed some careers to grow rapidly:
- The extreme rise of xQc in 2021 is largely thanks to GTA 5
- In Germany, streamers like Real_Baazi, who latched onto MontanaBlack, skyrocketed from zero to the top of the platform because of GTA 5.
GTA 5 is dangerous for Twitch streamers due to ‘erotic role play’
What is the risk? What Twitch streamers learn the hard way: GTA 5 is not ideally suited for streaming on Twitch, as there are clear sexualized contents for which one can be banned on Twitch: Because ‘sexually explicit content is banned on Twitch’. However, in GTA 5, prostitutes and strip clubs appear.
It is even more dangerous when Twitch streamers engage in ‘erotic role play’ with each other.
Twitch explains that they decide what constitutes sexual content based on the ‘general framework and context that surrounds it’: This could mean that you can visit a sex club in GTA 5 but are expressly not allowed to behave suggestively there.
This has now even led to the downfall of Twitch’s biggest streamer, Kai Cenat. Cenat was banned for ‘repeated simulated sexual activity in GTA 5.’ (via dexerto)
Kai Cenat was likely banned from Twitch for simulated oral sex
What exactly did he do? Cenat was apparently banned for ‘ERP’ – erotic role play. Kai Cenat simulated with a female streamer how the character of the woman orally satisfied his character for 5 seconds. Then he screamed, “My boss! My boss!” and fled the scene, with the woman screaming after him, insisting he perform actions.
This was apparently meant as a joke but is considered by Twitch to be so sexually charged that it was enough for a ban (via tiktok).
We see: Role playing in GTA 5 is incredibly lucrative on one hand but also dangerous. A wrong gesture or phrase, and the ban hammer strikes, no matter if you’re a small streamer or one of the biggest, like Kai Cenat.
We have already reported on dangerous places in GTA 5:
One place in GTA Online is probably so wicked that a visit can lead to a Twitch ban
