A Twitch streamer has gone too far in Counter-Strike and has been banned. Now he is begging Valve’s CEO for mercy.
Who is the Twitch streamer? Nicholas Stewart (24), better known as Jynxzi, is an American Twitch streamer known for his loud, flashy demeanor and extreme reactions. He screams a lot, jumps up and down, or falls back in his chair.
For years, Jynxzi streamed almost exclusively Ubisoft’s tactical shooter Rainbow Six: Siege and became number 1 on Twitch. In 2024, he regularly entertained over 50,000 viewers (via Sullygnome).
In 2025, he turned away from Rainbow Six: Siege more frequently, also showing a lot of Clash Royale and other games like Fortnite or Minecraft. Since March 2026, he has been regularly streaming Counter-Strike 2 – at least, when he’s not serving a ban.
Streamer makes a mistake, bans himself from the market
What kind of ban was it? Jynxzi received a three-day market restriction on Steam and therefore cannot become active and trade on the Steam marketplace until March 26.
How did the ban occur? Jynxzi is currently opening a ton of cases in Counter-Strike 2. To do this, he regularly adds larger amounts of funds to his Steam account. During his stream on March 23, 2026, he encountered a limit that Valve sets for its users:
Jynxzi was no longer allowed to add funds to his Steam account. He had reached the upper limit.
Valve restricts how much money each user can add to their Steam balance per day. For American customers like Jynxzi, this limit is $2,000 (via Steam). With the funds he charged during the stream the day before, he reached this limit.
For the streamer, this meant: He could no longer add money and could not open new cases.
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A friend of the American, who was also present during the stream, then came up with the brilliant idea of sending him gift cards instead. After all, the streamer wouldn’t be adding the money himself.
However, accepting gift cards can lead to the account being restricted from the market for 72 hours. This is now the case for Jynxzi. Although Steam warns the user before accepting the gift card about the impending restriction, the streamer apparently overlooked this and accepted the card. The market restriction followed.
This means that instead of being unable to add money until the end of the day, Jynxzi can now not be active on the Steam marketplace at all until March 26.
Streamer kneels before Gabe Newell
This is how it came to the kneeling: During the stream, Jynxzi and his buddy desperately searched for a way to lift the ban to continue opening cases.
They finally came up with the idea of directly addressing Gabe Newell. Jynxzi was to fall to his knees in a black-and-white image set to sad music and plead with the CEO and co-founder of Valve for mercy. He did so in an entirely exaggerated manner, as is usual for the streamer:
“I want to apologize for asking my friend to send me a Steam gift card worth $100, even though I knew I had exceeded your 24-hour limit,” the streamer explains, apologizing to Valve, Steam, and Counter-Strike before asking Gabe Newell to lift the market restriction.
If you want to know more about the man for whom Jynxzi knelt during the stream and begged for mercy, you can read the story of Gabe Newell on MeinMMO: Gabe Newell is the man behind Valve, but what did he do before the success of Steam? [MeinMMO Classic]
