Twitch reverse DarksydePhil ban for “hateful slur” and admit it was a mistake

Twitch streamer Phil ‘DarksydePhil’ Burnell has had his suspension from the platform overturned, after Twitch banned his account for ‘hateful conduct’ on May 15. The streaming platform said the suspension was a “mistake on our part.”

DarksydePhil is a longtime Twitch streamer with over 100,000 followers, who has faced a series of bans in the past, including another erroneous ban in October 2020 for a DMCA claim that was overturned.

On May 15, DSP revealed that he had been handed a seven-day suspension for using a “hateful slur”, but immediately denied that he had done so.

“This DID NOT NOT HAPPEN, I have tons of people watching the stream and it simply didn’t occur,” he said on Twitter. “I now have to appeal this bc apparently Twitch doesn’t know what they are doing.”

DarksydePhil unbanned

When users posted a clip of the incident in question, DarksydePhil claimed that he had stuttered on the word ‘negative’, and said Twitch was “out of their minds.”

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He also confirmed he had appealed the suspension but was worried it would take a number of days to fix.

However, Twitch overturned the ban quickly, within a matter of hours. Sharing the message he received from the platform, DSP said he would still stream on YouTube instead, as he had already set up his channel for it.

Twitch’s message simply read: “Your account was suspended or blocked due to a mistake on our part. I’ve gone ahead and reversed this suspension on your account, so you are free to use our services once again.”

The platform also apologized for any inconvenience or confusion.

DarksydePhil lost his partnership with Twitch earlier in 2021, and claimed that he was no longer going to receive payment from Twitch revenue he made.

As a result, he increased his donation goals, and ran a ‘marathon stream’ as a fundraiser. However, some fans were critical of how forceful he was in asking for donations, and one fan was banned from his chat for refusing to donate through PayPal.

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However, on the same day that he was banned, DSP revealed that Twitch would in fact be making a payment to him that month. Fans in the replies questioned why he did the fundraiser, believing they had been scammed.

DarksydePhil responded that the amount received from Twitch was less than normal, because his partnership had been ended 3 weeks into the month, therefore missing one week.

For the time being, it looks like Phil will be moving to stream more on his YouTube channel instead.