Twitch bans Minecraft speedrunner for making fun of himself

Feinberg, a small Twitch streamer and Minecraft speedrunner, has been handed a rather strange ban from Twitch on 23rd June.

Feinberg, who is one of the top Minecraft speedrunners and holds the 1.16 FSG world record (5:42), has been banned from Twitch because the name of his account was making fun of another streamer.

(Picture: Feinberg)

And while the name of the banned account was indeed made to poke fun of a streamer, the streamer mocked by the name was Feinberg himself, as the account (which is his alternative account) is named "FeinbergSucks".

To make things even worse for Feinberg, his alternative account has been permanently suspended.

Hi @TwitchSupport day 2 of me being unfairly suspended on my alternate account "feinbergsucks" for making fun of myself!! I'll delete the account or change the name I don't care - I stream fulltime and will break ToS if I use my main account. Please help support case #05091932

— Feinberg (@feinberg_mc) June 24, 2021

Feinberg says that he needs his alternative account unbanned because he doesn't want to jeopardize his main account, due to Twitch's terms of service.

"Day 2 of me being unfairly suspended on my alternate account "FeinbergSucks" for making fun of myself," he tweeted out. "I'll delete the account or change the name I don't care - I stream full-time and will break ToS if I use my main account."

Feinberg urges his fans and other members of the community to support his case as there's still no response from Twitch.

(Picture: Method)

Feinberg is streaming full-time for a living, as a member of Method. And with one of his accounts being banned, he is currently unable to stream. That's because he fears his main account might be suspended as well, as it might be considered "suspension evasion" according to Twitch Community Guidelines, where it states that it is forbidden to use another account to stream during the suspension, as it falls under "attempt to circumvent an account suspension".

One thing that currently works in Feinberg's favour is that his problem got the attention of r/LivestreamFail, a subreddit dedicated to Twitch streamers, which might be enough for his case to get noticed by Twitch and resolved in a timely manner and with a positive outcome for Feinberg.

Interestingly enough, a similar case happened to his fellow Minecraft content creator GeorgeNotFound, whose alternative account ThisIsNotGeorgeNotFound was suspended in March 2021 for the same reason (inappropriate username), but it has since been unbanned.

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If this case is anything to go by, Feinberg can hope for his situation to resolve in a similar fashion, though we should keep in mind that GeorgeNotFound is a significantly bigger star with over 3.8M followers on his main Twitch account, while Feinberg has only around 25,000 followers, and might not be a priority for Twitch, which has been accused before of "giving preferential treatment" to big streamers.

We will follow the situation closely and update the story as it develops.