The gamba meta lives on: Twitch says it’s “digging into” Counter-Strike skin gambling involving 120+ top streamers

Back in September 2022, Twitch finally did something about the “gamba meta” that had possessed its platform for years. Top streamers were taking sponsorships from gambling sites (many of them owned by offshore companies dodging U.S. regulations), making millions of dollars’ worth of bets (much of it in cryptocurrency) on stream, and affiliate-advertising sites like Stake.com with chunky signup bonuses and promises of low-risk or even no-risk trials.

Twitch’s crackdown that month ended up dropping gambling stream viewership by 75% over the next year. But recent data from Barron’s alleges betting companies and streamers haven’t left Twitch–they just use workarounds like Counter-Strike skin gambling. So, Twitch finds itself once again tackling gambling. The question is, can it crack down effectively?

Counter-Strike is a video game, and like most video games, offers skins players can put on their characters and guns. Unlike most video games, though, Counter-Strike has a thriving secondary market where players sell skins to one another, sometimes for thousands of dollars. Instead of dollars or crypto, the sites Barron’s investigated use Counter-Strike skins as currency–and they get the word out about their services by sponsoring streamers.

As Barron’s points out, skin gambling (which has been around for a decade and is not only officially permitted by Counter-Strike developer/Steam owner Valve, but reportedly makes as much as $60 million per month for the company) is a grey area legally.

But, at least on Twitch, the rules are clear. A spokesperson told the outlet that “gambling–and any promotion or sponsorship of skins gambling–is not allowed on Twitch.”

Barron’s investigation found that 120 of Twitch’s most-watched Counter-Strike streamers are still sponsored by skin gambling sites. It also found ads for skin gambling sites running alongside Twitch content and provided specific examples to the platform; months later, it says, “most of the gambling sites remain active advertisers.” (It confronted Google

and Meta about similar ads found on their sites, too; they reportedly failed to take action as well.)

It’s not hard to see why content creators are lured by this niche: Barron’s spoke to several Twitch streamers and YouTubers who said they received offers as high as $200,000 a month to promote skin gambling sites. That’s not quite as hefty a payout as the crypto gambling biggies were offering in 2022, but it’s still a decent chunk of change.

But when creators are thinking about these deals, they should also think about the potential effects of gambling content on viewers. Creators can often paint an easy-breezy, everyone-wins picture of gambling, whether they mean to or not, because many gambling sites will give them currency to bet, so there’s little personal risk. That can lead to situations like the xQc viewer who lost $80,000 after developing a gambling habit while watching his streams. Streamers engaging in skin gambling could put their audience in a similar situation.

(To be fair, several notable gambling streamers, including xQc, have spoken up about their major losses, but that speaking up is often done weeks or months after their content airs.)

And then there’s the issue of kids: Barron’s points out that Twitch claims to block gambling-related content for minors, but a reporter who wasn’t logged in to the platform was able to bypass the content warning by click a “Start Watching” button. They didn’t even have to verify their age.

A Twitch spokesperson told Barron’s it’s “digging into the examples you raised.”

If it digs far enough to enforce its own TOS, we could see a wave of bans across the Counter-Strike community.