The Twitch streamer Verloren regularly shows Minecraft on his channel. A few months ago, he received a donation of $1,200, which seemed strange to him. He reported it to Twitch support. They reversed the donation and permanently banned his account from future donations. Verloren cannot understand this and took his story public.
What exactly happened?
- Verloren received a donation of $1,200 in bits. Bits are a currency on Twitch that viewers can buy to support their favorite streamers.
- The curious thing about the donation was that it was sent while the streamer was offline. Usually, donations are made during a livestream, as many donors enjoy the streamer’s reaction.
- Out of caution, Verloren reported the donation to Twitch support. He had a bad experience back in 2020 with a donor who had reversed all his money.
- The support team responded and reversed the donation immediately. However, they also banned Verloren’s entire account as a precaution. He complained and got his account back within an hour, along with the ability to earn money. The only catch was that there was no longer a ranking for donations and gifted subs in the stream.
- After that, Verloren contacted support again, hoping they could resolve the ranking display issue. However, support then banned Verloren from all future donations in bits.
Verloren shared the entire story with screenshots of the conversations with Twitch support on Twitter.
“Leads to streamers not reporting fraud anymore”
How is the story being reacted to? The support team from Twitch, mentioned during the Twitter thread, has not yet responded to Verloren’s allegations.
However, there are several reactions from the community gathering on Twitter and also on reddit, which see Twitch’s decision as a huge problem:
- surfordiebear writes, for example, on reddit: “This will only lead to streamers not reporting activities they consider fraudulent. Interesting move by Twitch.”
- Also, MrTastix sees a problem here: “When you ask for honesty and then ‘reward’ people by punishing them, you’re not showing that they should stop lying, but that they better not get caught” (via reddit).
Some users are now advising Verloren to switch to YouTube Gaming (via Twitter). In their eyes, that would be the only right step to show Twitch that they cannot treat their streamers this way.
Verloren would not be the first streamer to switch to YouTube in recent months. Ludwig left Twitch in December 2021. He criticized that Twitch did not give him the love he deserved. Previously, TimTheTatman and DrLupo switched to YouTube in September.
Verloren is a small streamer and relies on bits
Who is Verloren anyway? Verloren has been active on Twitch since 2016 and belongs to the “smaller” streamers. On average, he has 90 viewers, peaking at 5,673 viewers in the last 365 days.
His focus is on Minecraft, where he has spent over 1,000 hours livestreaming. He also showed Star Trek Fleet Command and Raid: Shadow Legends, but both only for a few hours.
Why are such bans a problem, especially for small streamers? Streamers with a small community often rely on receiving donations.
Those with few viewers do not matter for advertising deals and have a small circle of people who can subscribe. However, the few viewers are happy to donate extra money in addition to their subscriptions.
That is why the ranking is so important, which Verloren had asked about in another ticket to Twitch support. These whales, who invest a lot, like to see themselves at the top of such rankings.
Any kind of bans on Twitch are a problem for streamers. Recently, a female streamer demanded sick days to cover a loss of income:
Streamer receives ban, demands paid sick days from Twitch
Your opinion is important to us!
Do you like the article? Then let us know!