Yesterday, Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins’ posted a video to Twitter in which he stated that his previous streaming platform Twitch seemingly promoted a ‘porn account’ on his inactive channel.
Earlier this month, Ninja left Twitch for an exclusivity agreement with Microsoft’s streaming service Mixer. It was an unprecedented move, due to Ninja’s high profile and prolific success as the top Fortnite streamer on Twitch, and that Mixer is a modest contender among the live stream platform competitors. After the split, Twitch used Ninja’s inactive account to promote a handful of other channels, with a lighthearted sentence, ‘The streamer you’re looking for is in another castle.’
Yesterday, in the links to other popular live streams was a porn account. Users who searched for Ninja’s channel on Twitch, some of whom were presumably young fans, would have seen the explicit live stream as one of the promoted channels. Ninja expressed his disgust and regret for what had happened on his inactive account in a video posted to Twitter.
Disgusted and so sorry. pic.twitter.com/gnUY5Kp52E
— Ninja (@Ninja) August 11, 2019
‘Well now, there was a porn account that was number one being recommended on my channel, and I have no say in any of this stuff,’ Ninja explained. ‘This is the line. This is the straw. We’re trying to get the whole channel taken down to begin with, or at least not promote other streamers and other channels on my brand, on my freakin’ profile. So for anyone who saw that, for anyone whose kids [saw that], or just obviously didn’t want to see that, I apologise and I’m sorry.’
Twitch does not condone live streams of ‘sexually explicit content and activities, such as pornography, sexual acts, and sexual services, including solicitation and offers for such content’, so it is currently unknown how the account came into being or how it appeared on Ninja’s channel. Twitch CEO Emmett Shear responded to the controversy and apologised to Ninja on Twitter yesterday.
4/ On a more personal note, I apologize want to apologize directly to @ninja that this happened. It wasn’t our intent, but it should not have happened. No excuses.
— Emmett Shear (@eshear) August 11, 2019
‘Our community comes to Twitch looking for live content. To help ensure they find great, live channels we’ve been experimenting with showing recommended content across Twitch, including on streamer’s pages that are offline,’ Shear stated. ‘This helps all streamers as it creates new community connections. However, the lewd content that appeared on the Ninja offline channel page grossly violates our terms of service, and we’ve permanently suspended the account in question.’
Ninja’s wife and manager Jessica Blevins did not appreciate the CEO’s response, however. She stated that Twitch is discontented with Ninja’s departure and intend to ruin their brand as consequence.
Twitch is doing PR control right now but it seems their intent from the beginning was to try to kill @Ninja brand. They say promoting other channels on his page wasn’t of ill-intent, but here is a Twitch co-founder saying RIP with a winky face to Tylers transition. Petty https://t.co/O86Z5QsecI
— Jessica Blevins (@JessicaBlevins) August 11, 2019
Ninja’s Twitch account now looks like a default offline channel, with no other live streams present and only shows Ninja’s final broadcast in the video player tab. The streamer stated that he wants the channel to be removed completely from the platform, even before an error of this magnitude, but whether that will come to pass remains to be seen.
