Twitch quickly unban Jinny after controversial TLOU2 comments

Calum Patterson
Jinny and abby from the last of us 2

After being handed a two-week suspension, Twitch streamer ‘Jinnytty’ has had her ban lifted after only eight hours, following her public statement and apology.

Jinny had been streaming The Last of Us 2 on July 24 when the ban struck, after comments she made about one of the game’s leading characters, Abby.

The streamer said that due to her frustration with the character and the story, she “just wanted to say I don’t want to look at her anymore, but I put it in a wrong way.”

The character, Abby, has a notably large and muscular physique, and Jinny called her transgender (the character is not, in fact, transgender).

Abby standing with an axeAbby in the The Last of Us Part II.

“I wasn’t 100% sure if she was transgender or not and I saw a lot of people talking about it, so without thinking I thought it was okay to use the word transgender to describe her,” Jinny said.

In a Discord message, Jinny said it was “time to appeal”, and it appears that the appeal was successful, as her two-week ban was cut considerably shorter.

“I really didn’t mean to hate on someone and I have nothing against transgender people,” Jinny continued, in her statement. “I sincerely apologize for anyone who got offended by it and I promise that in the future, I will be more educated and careful with what I say and do on stream.”

Explaining her comment, she said, “I was just not interested in Abby’s story during the game. I thought it was boring and exhausting so I just wanted to say I don’t want to look at her anymore, but I put it in a wrong way.”

Twitch has a zero-tolerance policy for what it calls “hateful conduct” on the platform, and even first-time violations typically result in a lengthy ban.

It’s unclear exactly why Twitch reversed its decision to hand Jinny a two-week ban. The Amazon-owned platform says that it always takes context into account when issuing community guidelines strikes, and streamers always have the option to appeal.

Twitch does not comment on individual community guidelines violations to respect the privacy of users.