Last July, controversy erupted when some YouTube and Twitch personalities were found allegedly promoting websites for gambling in-game items from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in which they were heavily involved. They would stream or post a video showing their big wins of actual money and good skins on their channels to drive people to the websites, which they had personal stakes in. One such personality from last year was PhantomL0rd a streamer that, as a result of the controversy, was banned from Twitch. He has been silent until today where he posted a video with a statement prepared by his lawyer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1s2sCk9pvQ
The statement in full:
As many of you are already aware, there is an ongoing dispute between myself and Twitch.TV. As a result of this dispute, I am not currently providing content through Twitch.TV. While I cannot and will not comment on the substance of this dispute, I assure you that I am considering all of my legal options and am looking forward to exerting my rights to the fullest extent of the law.That does not offer much in the way of details but does give the impression that PhantomL0rd will be pursuing some sort of legal action in regards to Twitch. After all, why remain silent for a year to only just now put out a statement like this? In the video, he says that his brand has been destroyed so he's fighting back to try to salvage at least something.
PhantomL0rd was banned from Twitch because he violated their Terms of Service. After news broke of the CS: GO gambling controversy, Valve issued a statement that they were not affiliated with the gambling websites in any way and sent them letters to cease operations as the websites were violating Steam user agreements and OpenID API user agreements. That led to Twitch putting out this statement, which was a reminder that part of their Terms of Service mentions that "broadcasters are not permitted to stream content that breaks the terms of service or user agreements of third-parties." A week later PhantomL0rd's channel was banned.
What do you think of PhantomL0rd's return? Do you think his ban was justified? Let us know in the comments below!
