This past Thursday, Twitch filed a lawsuit against two individuals who allegedly conducted the current “hate raids” going around.
This follows after a successful streamer strike earlier in the month. The strike was in response to Twitch’s lack of action as far as tackling the increasingly growing hate raid attacks. These attacks, that typically only happen to marginalized streamers, dox, harass, and attack them while these streamers are live.
What Is A Twitch Raid?
Image Via @twitch on Instagram
Originally, Twitch’s raid feature was designed as a positive tool for the community to use. It allowed streamers to flood another streamer’s livestream with their entire viewership. This has been a great tool for networking and morale on Twitch. This allows users to put themselves in the attention of other streamers. It is something bigger streamers often do to smaller streams to provide exposure, as well as support and confidence in other streamers. Unfortunately, it has been exploited by using a massive amount of dummy accounts and bots to do the exact opposite when raiding other accounts.
The streamer strike was only one response to the hate raid issues. The hate raids became the cherry on top for some of Twitch’s most popular users to switch over to other platforms like Facebook Gaming and Youtube Gaming. There have already been issues for streamers on Twitch that have become affiliates.
Twitch’s Current Dilemmas
Besides Twitch not allowing you to stream at the same time on other platforms or repurpose your stream for at least 24 hours, they also take a significant cut of the money earned by streamers. Not to mention they require a certain amount of hours of streaming in order for streamers to gain access to certain features. Additionally, some of their big contracts with big names had demanding hours. This is something people like TimTheTatMan and DrLupo couldn’t do because of the time demand of having their own families. YouTube was able to provide enticing enough contracts for these two streamers to make a no-brainer decision.
In the lawsuit, Twitch suspends and eventually permanently bans the two accounts they have found to be persistent offenders. Austrian account @CreatineOverdose and Dutch account @CruzzControl have evaded bans and has caused Twitch to seek a legally binding injunction that can prevent the two individuals from using its services and helping others in engaging in hate raids. Twitch hopes that this will shine a light on the issue and deter any future “hate raiders” from attempting these kinds of activities on the platform.
