Late last night, Twitch made an executive decision to follow in Valve’s footsteps. They released a post on their blog stating that they intend to enforce the Terms of Service on the streaming website that broadcasters aren’t allowed to break the user agreements of third-parties.
Today Valve released an announcement clarifying the intended use of Steam’s trading system and OpenID API. Valve specifically notes that using “the OpenID API and making the same web calls as Steam users to run a gambling business is not allowed by our API nor our user agreements.”
As a reminder, per Twitch’s Terms of Service, broadcasters are not permitted to stream content that breaks the terms of service or user agreements of third-parties. As such, content in which the broadcaster uses or promotes services that violate Valve’s stated restrictions is prohibited on Twitch. Our Rules of Conduct lists other examples such as playing pirated games and playing on unauthorized private servers.
It’s unknown whether or not other websites will follow in their footsteps, but having these two major entities in the gaming industry officially speak out about the topic, following the TmarTn and Prosyndicate CS:GO Lotto controversy of last week, puts another nail down on the coffin.
