Banned Streamer Wins Lawsuit Against Twitch
In the past, Twitch has come under fire for some questionable banning practices, which can feel highly unfair sometimes. In fact, one ban led to a lost lawsuit for the company, after streamer James "PhantomL0rd" Varga sued Twitch for not giving him a warning or reasons as to why he was banned back in 2016.
Varga was a popular streamer on CS:GO Shuffle, a site which basically allowed players to gamble on games by using "CS:GO" cosmetics as currency. Eventually, esports reporter Richard Lewis revealed that hackers had discovered that Varga was a part-owner of the gambling site.
This revelation broke plenty of Twitch guidelines and pretty quickly led to Varga's account being banned for life. According to The Verge, Varga was the seventh most popular Twitch streamer at the time, which made the ban a pretty big deal. According to PhantomL0rd's lawsuit (via Gamesindustry.biz), Varga felt that Twitch had violated its contract with him by banning him without an opportunity to correct the problem. Since he was no longer able to stream, Varga also sued for "significant monetary damage."
However, after years of legal battles, the courts have finally ruled in Varga's favor. Varga took to Twitter to announce the news on April 23 and said, "this is a win for ALL streamers." Twitter users were quick to reply with their own opinions on the situation, and people were split when it came to Varga's victory.
Many people didn't support what Varga had been doing with the gambling site. While Varga did win the case, many replies pointed out that he didn't even come close to winning 1% of what he sued for, which was $30 million. Some people also stood by their belief that Varga is a "scammer."
Still, there were plenty of PhantomL0rd fans in the mix who were beyond excited for Varga to win the case. Meanwhile, even those that were against Varga's actions were pleased by his win. One commenter mentioned, "[this lawsuit] creates a standard for Twitch to actually follow their own guidelines ... this affects all creators." Others didn't necessarily agree, and multiple people pointed out that Twitch contracts are much different now from what they used to be.
While Twitch has been known for shady actions in the past, it is debatable whether this news is good or bad for the company. On one hand, the platform avoided a massive multi-million dollar payout. On the other hand, Twitch lost a lawsuit against a creator that it banned nearly five whole years ago. Despite this verdict, Twitch has released a statement to PC Gamer, which confirmed that PhantomL0rd will not be returning to Twitch, despite the win.