Kick is good at branding itself as the antithesis of Twitch. It launched in October 2022, just after Twitch finally banned some forms of gambling content, and promised streamers affected by said ban that it would be their new home, with fewer rules and more free speech. It not only allowed gambling streams sponsored by online casinos like Stake.com (which, coincidentally, was founded by Kick’s founders), but encouraged them—along with other risqué genres like hot tub streams.
Since then, Kick has made calculated noise anytime Twitch fumbled. When Twitch made a quickly-reversed decision to implement strict new rules about branded streams, Kick offered to pay streamers’ contract cancellation fees if they’d move to its platform instead. When Twitch waffled yet again on how much of streamers’ income it’s willing to give to them, 50% or 70%, Kick tweeted its own streamer-to-platform ratio: “95/5.” And, most recently, Kick appeared to offer a licensing deal to the owner of Twitch’s OG emote BibleThump after Twitch chose to remove the emote from its platform instead of paying for the rights to keep using it.
Basically, Kick wants streamers to see it as the new bad boy in town. But some of the creators it’s attracted by presenting itself as lawless and edgy are pushing the limits—including Jack Doherty, who just got permabanned from the platform after getting into a car crash live on stream because he was reading chat while driving.
Subscribe for daily Tubefilter Top Stories
20-year-old Doherty has been in trouble before, but this stunt apparently was too much for the Kick team. On Oct. 5, he was driving his new $200,000 McLaren while livestreaming, and was looking down at his phone, reading messages from his community, when he lost control of the sports car and slammed into a guardrail.
A clip from the stream shows Doherty getting out of the car and filming its severely damaged nose. “Bro, my whole fucking car, bro. No fucking way,” he said. “Oh my gosh, there’s no fucking way.” He then circled around to his passenger and cameraman, who was visibly bleeding from his face, and asked him to keep filming. The cameraman apparently needed three stitches, but no other cars were involved in the accident, and Doherty himself was unharmed.
Shortly after, Doherty’s Kick channel disappeared. In a phone call with fellow streamer Ac7ionMan, Doherty complained the platform had permabanned him for the crash, saying, “It was an accident.”
Jack Doherty Just Confirmed That He Is Permanently Banned On Kick..🥳 pic.twitter.com/w5gtwFQWrW
— KickChamp👑 (@Kick_Champ) October 6, 2024
A Kick spokesperson told NBC the platform “does not condone illegal activity, which is why we swiftly took action to ban this creator from the platform.”
Issuing a strict and immediate response to this kind of behavior is something platforms have to do. YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch all have rules banning dangerous stunts, and YouTube specifically has Community Guidelines that allow for the termination of a creator’s channel if they’re convicted of a crime. Since what Doherty did was illegal, as Kick pointed out, it could land him in hot water with police.
It’s worth noting that Kick does openly welcome some questionable content that flirts with crossing legal lines. Or, at least, it used to, before Pirate Software called it out. In a recent stream, the game developer/ferret rescuer responded to a community member asking if he would consider Kick by pointing out the platform had a category specifically for streaming movies and TV shows—something that usually violates copyright law.
“As a platform, if someone is streaming copyrighted content on your platform, you get a DMCA claim and you take it down,” he said. “But if you make a category called ‘Other, TV Shows & Movies,’ you’re incentivizing the behavior on your platform.”
Kick changed the name of the category to “Other, Watch Party” after his comments caught attention. Does that mean it’ll actually stop people from streaming TV shows and movies in that category? Remains to be seen.
But obviously-illegal activity isn’t the only kind of bad behavior, and Doherty isn’t the only Kick streamer who’s behaved badly lately. During the most recent TwitchCon, there were multiple reports of Kick streamers showing up and harassing attendees, as well as starting physical altercations and crashing streamers’ broadcasts by shouting inappropriate comments.
In the wake of the convention, Kick CEO Ed Craven said the platform had suspended “multiple accounts” for “violating our IRL streaming policies,” but urged people to think that “the actions of a few individuals don’t reflect the broader platform.”
It’s clear Kick is now having to contend with the sort of people drawn in by promises of a rule-lite site. Maybe Doherty’s ban will give some streamers a wake-up call as to what they can get away with—and what they can’t.
