The streaming service Twitch has banned the legendary CS:GO pro Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev. He is considered to be the probably best player in Counterstrike: Global Offensive of all time. He has only scorn left for his third Twitch ban within a year.
This is s1mple: The 22-year-old Ukrainian is a CS:GO pro for Natus Vincere. He is regarded as one of the best players in “CS:GO” history and as an icon in esports. It is really only a question whether he is the best or if the Frenchman Zyw0o is.
If he is not on tour with Natus Vincere so hard that he forgets space and time, s1mple streams shooters like CS:GO, Valorant, or Call of Duty on Twitch. He streams relatively rarely, but when he is live, about 24,000 people watch him. They want to learn some tricks from him.
However, his career on Twitch is rather mixed.
Ukrainian feels misunderstood by Twitch
This is his story with Twitch: s1mple has already been temporarily banned twice by Twitch:
- In August 2019 he allegedly made hateful remarks. He said he was just teasing a friend. This alleged hateful comment was neither meant that way nor taken that way. The ban is ridiculous.
- In November 2019, Twitch again told him, he had violated the rules and would therefore be banned. He had used a swear word in Russian that he found “normal,” but which was considered hateful by Twitch. s1mple reacted to the fact that they at Twitch do not understand: a word can have different meanings in different contexts.
s1mple apparently feels: Twitch does not understand the nuances of the Russian language, nor those of Ukrainian culture. He felt unfairly punished.
What particularly annoyed s1mple, is that during his Twitch ban, fraudulent channels appeared, posing as “s1mple,” holding giveaways in his name, and scamming viewers.
With fake, fraudulent accounts, scammers went live in early 2020 and posed as shroud and s1mple. Both CS:GO stars were not visible on Twitch at the time, but the fake accounts reached the top of the CS:GO category on Twitch.
top 2 viewed cs:go channels are scams and twitch isnt doing anything about it from r/LivestreamFail
How s1mple now reacts to the ban: s1mple has now been banned by Twitch for the third time within a year. He does not know the reasons this time.
s1mple responded with a tweet:
In the tweet, s1mple clearly refers to Dr Disrespect and mimics his tweet about his ban. At the end of June.
No reason for the ban was given to him. While he enjoys the suspension, fans should enjoy his other streams with the great giveaways, where everyone can win easily.
With this, s1mple is referring to the scammers. It seems clear: s1mple can no longer take Twitch seriously at the moment.
Alongside s1mple, the Russian Danylo “Zeus” Teslenko was also banned by Twitch for the third time. He was formerly s1mple’s teammate and apparently has similar problems with Twitch’s rules as s1mple.
CS:GO players not only frequently argue with Twitch but also with Valve. One player has a particularly juicy grievance against Valve: The Finnish player Elias “Jamppi” Olkkonnen believes Valve has sabotaged his professional career in CS:GO. Therefore, he wanted to sue them:
CS:GO player sues Valve for €266,000, but unfortunately the wrong Valve
