Just a few days after Twitch announced that it would be cracking down on folks streaming Counter-Strike gambling sites, one of the most popular streamers, PhantomL0rd, had their account closed by Twitch.
“The community has closed this channel due to terms of service violations,” reads a statement from Twitch on PhantomL0rd’s channel.
Twitch refused to provide any clarification on PhantomL0rd’s ban. Not every ban is permanent, so it’s unclear whether PhantomL0rd will be allowed to return, followers and subscribers intact, at a later date.
“We don’t comment on terms of service violations,” said a spokesperson.
PhantomL0rd did not respond to my request for comment, and hasn’t publicly commented via YouTube, Twitter or other social networks. His girlfriend, who often appears on streams with him, has also been quiet.
According to aggregation website SocialBlade, PhantomL0rd had nearly 1.4 million followers on Twitch. On YouTube, he racked up 500,00 subscribers.
When a Twitch account is banned, the archived videos are removed, too. After Twitch and Valve announced they’d be cracking down, PhantomL0rd published a reaction video and declared that “gamblel0rd is over”.
On Saturday, the streamer announced his “stream has now changed forever” and published a YouTube video promising a return to streaming. It wasn’t clear what he meant by “changed”, however.
“I know the plays aren’t the best lol,” he wrote in a YouTube comment, “just wanted to inform you all of my return.”
The video does show him using CSGOWild, a gambling site that’s also been at the centre of controversy about who helped found it.
Some of PhantomL0rd’s most popular videos have involved gambling. In one case, he reportedly lost $US12,642.97 ($16,628) on a single bet.
Given what we now know about what can happen behind-the-scenes at these sites, there’s reason to be sceptical that such moments aren’t genuine.
Comments
4 responses to “Twitch Bans Top Counter-Strike Gambling Streamer”
Kinda looks like the guy in the topic picture is knuckles deep up his nose.
Play some video games.
No mention of the fact that he owns CSGOWild and had been cheating by getting the winning seed percentage from the developer via Skype before he’d bet to ensure he won. At one point he even got the seed percentage so he could lose on purpose to create a video of him losing skins.
Long story short, he essentially stole thousands and thousands of dollars worth of skins from unknowing viewers and users of his site.
In addition, since his twitch account has been offline he’s continued to receive new subscribers ($5 to become a sub) every 20-30 minutes. The last hundred to a thousand subs have been brand new twitch accounts that aren’t even following any channels, essentially implication they are automated bots.
There’s a lot more to this story that I feel you should look into.
*potentially owns CSGOWild.