A tearful confession from a popular Twitch streamer, who admitted to conning friends and followers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay his gambling expenses, prompted calls for the site to crack down on users broadcasting live bets in online casinos. On Tuesday, the company responded to users, announcing a new prohibition on streaming any gambling site that features slots or roulette.
The ban is slated to take effect on October 18.
Abraham Mohammed, known as ItsSliker on Twitch, where he has more than 400,000 subscribers — or “Sliker” for short — took to his channel this weekend to respond to a spate of recent accusations that he had bilked other streamers of money with stories of frozen bank accounts and similar woes. In the video, the British streamer explained that he got into gambling through Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a video game whose professional esport community made it possible to wager on matches with rare and valuable in-game items, and eventually to bet these goods elsewhere. Soon, Sliker said, he was burning through all his Twitch money in virtual casinos and asking other users for loans, always promising to repay them while never revealing his addiction or insurmountable debt.
“I am not a victim,” he emphasized, adding: “My intentions were never to scam anyone.”
Sliker’s preferred venues for this gambling are unclear, and he did not…
