Sommer Ray and Adin Ross risk Twitch ban during long-awaited hot tub stream

Instagram model and influencer Sommer Ray followed through on her promise to do a hot tub stream on Twitch, joining Adin Ross on his channel and peaking at over 150,000 live viewers. However, the stream risked action from the platform as it was in the wrong category.

When the ‘hot tub meta’ reached a peak on Twitch earlier in 2021, Twitch was forced to take action as scrutiny from the community got intense.

This resulted in the new ‘Beaches, Pools & Hot Tubs’ category, separating the content from the more general use ‘Just Chatting’ category.

In May, Sommer Ray promised she would do her own hot tub stream, claiming it would “crash Twitch” – and she kept her word, sort of.

Although Sommer did set up her own Twitch channel, she opted to stream alongside Adin Ross, one of the most popular streamers and the fastest-growing in 2021 so far.

The stream peaked at over 150,000 concurrent viewers, but, actually risked action from Twitch, and potentially even a suspension, as AdinRoss did not categorize it under the aforementioned ‘Beaches, Pools & Hot Tubs’ category.

Twitch’s policy when the new category was introduced states that “Creators that have chosen swimwear that is allowed under the “Swim and Beaches” contextual exception to our standard Nudity and Attire policy must stream into the Pools, Hot Tubs & Beaches category.”

Putting a stream in the wrong category is something that users can report a channel for, and Twitch’s community guidelines state that “intentional channel miscategorization” is a violation of the policy.

However, it’s a rule that is rarely enforced, and typically Twitch admins will simply move the stream into the correct category manually.

Whether the success of the stream encourages Sommer to start streaming on her own channel remains to be seen, but it already has 50,000 followers, without a single stream.