Slot Streamers Find A New Platform Amid Twitch Gambling Ban

After Twitch banned some types of gambling on the platform, it seems a number of streamers have gone elsewhere. That alternative platform is called Dlive, which promotes itself as a more unrestricted streaming space. The company posted a tweet on October 13, reminding people that Twitch is placing a ban on "slots, roulette [and] dice games," stating that people could still do it on Dlive with the hashtag "#YourStreamYourRules." Twitch cracked down on gambling after Pokimane, Ludwig (who has previously talked about his own gambling addiction), and other massive streamers called for a boycott of Twitch.

With the ban in place, the number of viewers in the slots category on Twitch has seemingly plummeted, with 1.2 million people following the category but only 12,500 viewers at the time of writing. A glance at the page includes some streamers breaking the new slots rule (and apparently hoping nobody notices), but there are also multiple pages that are live with screens pointing them to Dlive, where the streamer is actually broadcasting and playing slots. While bigger gambling streamers like Trainwreck haven't mentioned making a move over, it seems smaller streamers have decided to give Dlive a chance.

On Dlive's "about" page, the company describes itself as a streaming platform that wants to reward its content creators for sticking with it, mentioning smaller revenue splits and other issues that people have with Twitch as reasons to make the move. 

Dlive boasts a 75-25 split with content creators, although there is a caveat to that number: Dlive uses a cryptocurrency for its donations and subscriptions called Lemon. This currency can only be used through the platform, although the company says it will pay out any money earned by streamers in regular currency. It also promotes BTT (a BitTorrent cryptocurrency) on the site's about page.

It's unclear how many streamers will be able to get their audiences to make the jump to a whole new platform, especially since the majority of the streamers making the jump don't have the audience size of, say, xQc. At the time of writing, Dlive's slots category only has 6,300 viewers, which is about half of Twitch's own slots category. The platform doesn't seem to be bringing in a varied audience just yet, with the next largest category being the more generic-sounding "People," which has 700 viewers. Whatever the case, Dlive is definitely making a push to be more inviting for those content creators.