Twitch’s Cheating Policy Sparks Outrage: Will It Destroy Gaming Communities?

A monitoring organization focused on preventing cheating is alerting Twitch about the potential severe impacts that lenient penalties for streamers sharing cheats might bring upon several gaming communities.

On February 18, Twitch unveiled adjustments to their ban policy, including allowing violations to lapse and escalating penalties for users persistently committing the same offense.

On their blog associated with the Amazon-owned platform, they clarified that the majority of infractions are minor (for instance, cheating in video games), and these usually disappear after a period of 90 days.

A following illustration also demonstrated that getting caught cheating in games leads to a 1-day suspension, and if caught a second time, the penalty escalates to 3 days.

This policy is causing discontent among numerous players, even organizations like ‘Anti-cheat Police Department,’ who argue that this light punishment “establishes a potentially harmful precedent.

Twitch under fire for labeling cheating a “minor offense”

As a dedicated gamer, I’ve noticed that when Twitch only gives one-day bans to streamers using cheats, it seems like they’re unwittingly helping the creators of these cheat softwares. It’s almost like providing them with a free testing ground for their creations.

The ACPD team has been relentless in our efforts to eradicate deceptive marketing practices on significant social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Discord. We’ve witnessed and recorded instances where people are influenced, consume, and ultimately opt for cheats from unregulated cheating content,” they clarified.

The team observed that unscrupulous game developers often make money through marketing, even when they engage in dishonest practices. By imposing light penalties instead of severe suspensions, this could imply that cheating is not considered a significant violation.

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Choosing to cheat while streaming might seem like a trivial infraction, but its repercussions could be catastrophic for the fan communities of our beloved games. Here at ACPD, we’ve dedicated ourselves to eradicating promotions of cheating on prominent social media sites like TikTok, YouTube, and others.

— Anti-Cheat Police Department 🕵️ (@AntiCheatPD) February 20, 2025

Permitting individuals to promote their unethical practices within gaming, with merely a light reprimand as consequence, establishes a harmful pattern that could potentially normalize such behavior across the broader gaming world,” they explained instead.

On Twitch, being the most prominent live-streaming service for video games, it’s their duty to regulate content and make decisions about what the gaming community gets exposed to and can pass on.

For quite some time now, the issue of cheating in popular video games like Call of Duty has sparked heated debates. Influential gamers like NICKMERCS and Nadeshot have gone as far as suggesting that individuals found guilty of cheating could potentially face legal consequences, such as imprisonment.

Occasionally, streamers unintentionally reveal their use of cheats like aimbots or wallhacks, which often leads to derision from their audience.

It remains to be seen whether Twitch retracts these relatively light penalties for cheating, particularly if there’s strong opposition from developers who collaborate with the platform.

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2025-02-21 02:48