Asmongold hits out at Twitch following second channel suspension

Popular content creator Asmongold has hit out at the 24-hour Twitch ban acquired on his second channel, detailing the reasons in a June 10 YouTube video. 

The Twitch community was shocked on June 10 when it was announced that veteran streamer Asmongold had received a ban on his second channel, known as ZackRawrr.

Details surrounding the ban were not initially clear, but Asmongold has now confirmed it will be a 24-hour suspension, incurred for “hateful and unmoderated conduct”.

However, the streamer is unimpressed with the Amazon-owned platform for their reasoning, a position he articulated late on June 10 in a series of tweets and a response video.

First, he confirmed he will be unable to stream until Sunday, June 12, even on his unbanned main channel: “For those that were wondering, I won’t be live tomorrow because my second channel is suspended and it would technically be “ban evasion”.”

In the attached YouTube video, Asmon explained that he was streaming Diablo Immortal and a player using in-game chat (not Twitch chat), posted a racial slur. They did so using full stops and spaces to workaround Asmon’s explicit language filter.

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When realizing that the slur was displayed on his stream, Asmon played it down so as to avoid giving the troll attention. However, Twitch interpreted this as Asmon “not adequately addressing the situation”.

“So Twitch suspended my account with apparently no grounds to even appeal and remove the suspension,” he said. “I clearly did not support any of this [racist language] and also it’s the implication that by the suspension being there that I am somehow complicit or okay or approve of racism being on my stream. Which I find to be completely f**king disgusting.”

Asmon outlined his past history with combatting racism on Twitch, banning emotes that were associated with negative stereotypes, and enforcing strict rules in his Twitch chat. Some of the emotes Asmon has chosen to distance himself from are still available on the platform.

He continued: “I find it incredibly ridiculous that trying to not draw attention to something and not allow somebody to weaponize and therefore provide a reward structure around using a word like this is seen as a bad thing… as soon as somebody gets suspended for something like this, what that really tells everybody else in the community is that if you want to get a streamer you don’t like suspended, go into their game and start spamming the n-word… what does that really do? It creates more racism, it creates more negativity.”

He also said that, from now on, he will ensure game chat is fully blocked at all times.

Asmon’s second channel will be unbanned late on June 11, meaning he is free to stream on either of his channels from that point.