On February 24, Twitch banned the MMORPG streamer ATK. He is an important streamer in the MMORPG Lost Ark (Steam). However, the streamer does not see the responsibility for the ban resting with himself, but rather with viewers who provoked him.
Who is he?
- ATK is a Twitch streamer and YouTuber who specializes in the MMORPG Lost Ark.
- Last year, he streamed 2,817 hours of Lost Ark, effectively making it a full-time job. On average, he had 708 viewers: ATK feels strongly that Lost Ark is no longer as big on Steam as it was in 2022. Back then, ATK had almost twice as many viewers.
- Many Lost Ark players will recognize ATK primarily for his guides on the game. Here, he has some videos with around 300,000 views.
Streamer blames “toxic viewers”
Why was he banned? The stream received a 7-day ban from Twitch.
As the streamer himself informs his viewers in a Discord message (via youtube), he is not doing well right now, and “toxic hate watchers” who lead miserable lives exploited this to drag him down to their level and beat him with experience.
He used a “hateful word” on Twitch and was banned for it. He also apologizes for this, except to those who were so mean to him and provoked him to do so. ATK was just defending himself against their racism.
What exactly did he say? As noted in comments on Reddit, he used the homophobic word “faggot,” which Twitch traditionally punishes with a ban.
Viewers believe: He is not made for Twitch
How is this being discussed: On Reddit, it is believed that the situation for streamers of “Lost Ark” is tense because the MMORPG is performing worse and revenues are declining. This leads to a heated atmosphere.
Someone like ATK is also susceptible to the chat and gets thrown off balance when he faces criticism there. When people criticize him, he justifies himself for a long time, which throws him off track and lowers the quality of his streams.
He is said to be not “cut from the right cloth for Twitch,” as despite his long hours on Twitch, he has never understood how to properly engage with the chat and handle feedback. He should rather focus on guides.
His behavior of blaming viewers is generally criticized as childish. Streamers need to be able to filter this out.
What’s behind it: These are always tough demands placed on streamers. But certain words simply should not be in one’s active vocabulary, and everyone who streams on Twitch should know these words. Because these are trigger words that target particularly protected groups. For these words, Twitch bans regardless of the context. It doesn’t matter if you were provoked or if it “slipped out”.
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