S1mple banned from Twitch for second time, requests to end partnership

CS:GO player Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev took to Twitter yesterday evening to tell fans that his Twitch channel was banned. This marks s1mple’s second suspension in three months.

Though he has been widely regarded as one of the best players in professional CS:GO history, s1mple hasn’t found the same amount of progression on his own streaming platforms after being plagued by bans on the streaming platform. The player was previously banned in August for using a homophobic Russian slur.

Though it’s unclear what the reason was for s1mple’s second ban from Twitch, in the player’s announcement of the ban on Twitter, he says it could all just be a misunderstanding. “Stupid Twitch doesn’t understand the different meanings of the same word in different contexts,” s1mple said in his tweet. After expressing frustration for the ban, s1mple then asked for the streaming platform to end his partnership mutually. “Can’t remove Twitch partnership by myself because of ban, do it instead of me please @Twitch.”

Per Twitch's Community Guidelines, the platform has relatively strict guidelines for streamers to follow and is very adamant about them not expressing any “hateful conduct” on their platform, which the company describes as “any content or activity that promotes, encourages, or facilitates discrimination, denigration, objectification, harassment, or violence based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, medical condition, physical characteristics, or veteran status, and is prohibited.” With the various type of suspensions, s1mple could be off of the platform for anywhere from 24 hours to 30 days, depending on the severity of his infraction and if Twitch will take into account his previous suspension.

The announcement of s1mple’s ban from Twitch comes days after Son “OGE” Min-Seok was re-instated on the platform following a three-day ban after linking Flocculency’s Twitch channel to his chat, leading to fans of OGE to leave transphobic comments in Flocculency channel.