Twitch CEO Apologizes To Ninja After His Defunct Account Was Used To Promote A Porn Stream

Twitch CEO Emmett Shear has apologized to the platform’s former top star, Ninja, after his defunct channel was used to advertise a pornographic account.

Ninja, whose real name is Tyler Blevins, made the seismic decision to move over to Microsoft’s Twitch competitor Mixer earlier this month. After he moved, Twitch (where he had 14.7 million followers) stripped his channel’s information and replaced it with a notice reading, “The streamer you’re looking for is in another castle. Check out these popular live channels.” Below the notice was a grid display of other streamers’ channels.

Yesterday, Blevins posted a video to his Twitter account, saying he’d become aware that the top promoted stream on his account was one that was explicitly pornographic (which is against Twitch’s terms of service). He said he and his team had taken care to make sure his public transition from Twitch to Mixer was “super professional,” and that they hadn’t said anything “bad or negative about Twitch, obviously, because there was really no reason to.”

However, privately, “We were 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 freaking profile,” he explained. “I’ve been streaming for eight years to build that brand and to build my channel. Now, there was a porn account that was number one, being recommended on my channel. And I have no say in any of this.”

Late yesterday, Shear replied from his own Twitter account, explaining that the streamer promotion that appeared on Blevins’ channel was part of an experiment Twitch is running across streamers’ pages, including the channels of currently using the service and those who’ve left. He also said that the user running the pornographic channel had been permanently banned from Twitch, and that Twitch has suspended the stream recommendation experiment for the time being.

“On a more personal note, I want to apologize directly to @Ninja that this happened,” he added. “It wasn’t our intent, but it should not have happened. No excuses.”

After Shear’s tweets, Blevins posted a brief update:

While the above tweet is Blevins’ only public response to Shear’s apology, his wife Jessica Blevins took to Twitter to accuse the platform of trying “to kill the Ninja brand.” She retweeted an earlier tweet from Twitch co-founder Justin Kan as evidence of Twitch’s alleged ill will.

Kan’s tweet was a reply to Tyler’s announcement that he would be moving to Mixer. It read “RIP ;)”.