One of greatest Counter-Strike players out there, Oleksandr “S1mple” Kostyliev, has been banned from Twitch. The Twitter page Streamer Bans was the first to announce the Natus Vincere player’s third ban on the platform.
S1mple has had two previous run-ins with the Twitch ban hammer. In the past, he used what many agreed to be a homophobic slur in Russian. This has been the reasoning for S1mple’s ban in both cases in 2019. This time, however, the pro is denying he knows the reason why he was banned. According to his tweet in response, they haven’t told him. When S1mple announced he was banned on Twitter, he used the exact same tweet as DrDisrespect.
Champions Club,
Twitch has not notified me on the specific reason behind their decision… Firm handshakes to all for the support during this difficult time.
While I’m enjoying my ban we can all enjoy my other streams with "great" giveaways that everyone can "easily" win
-s1mple— Sasha (@s1mpleO) July 29, 2020
Along with his denial of knowing the reason, he called out Twitch for not working to stop the fake accounts of many prominent streamers. The fake accounts scam viewers into entering giveaways that don’t exist. The main critique is that while the staff may have the time to crackdown on whatever S1mple has done, they still leave the platform full of scammer bots.
Can Banned Gamers Still Be Featured on Twitch?
While S1mple’s account itself is banned, what will be his fate when it comes to the return of Pro CS? According to Twitch’s TOS, streamers cannot even play with a banned player. It is doubtful that he will be barred from competing on streams featured on Twitch, but if this favoritism is put into play, would that allow other banned personalities to be featured on Twitch streams?
Aside from that issue, will Twitch continue to hand out bans without informing streamers or the community as to why? This calls back to TwitchCon 2019 where the CEO of Twitch, Emmett Shear, claimed to bring more transparency into the moderation protocols. As we are seeing, this is not being implemented in the high profile cases. Now we have to wait for a response from Twitch, if there is any at all.
