If you want to start your Twitch streaming career, you should know there are certain game categories that are banned on the platform. This means you are not allowed to stream these games.
This is because these games depict certain behaviors that Twitch deems as being too much, so make sure not to cross these lines.
There are two main types of games banned from broadcast:
- Those that got the Adults Only rating
- And those that violate Twitch’s Community Guidelines and promote hate speech, nudity, gore, or extreme violence.
List of Games Banned on Twitch
Twitch already listed a series of games as being prohibited on the platform. This list includes:
- 3DXChat
- Artificial Girl 1, 2, & 3
- Artificial Academy 1 & 2
- Cobra Club
- Criminal Girls
- Dramatical Murder
- Ethnic Cleansing
- Grezzo 1 & 2
- Harem Party
- House Party
- HunieCam Studio
- HuniePop
- Kamidori Alchemy Meister
- Negligee
- Purin to Ohuro
- Purino Party
- Radiator 2
- Rinse and Repeat
- Sakura Angels
- Sakura Beach 1 & 2
- Sakura Dungeon
- Sakura Fantasy
- Sakura Santa
- Sakura Spirit
- Sakura Swim Club
- Second Life
- The Guy Game
- What’s under your blanket !?
- Witch Trainer
- Yandere Simulator
As Twitch explains, this list is subject to change. For example, if the ESRB rating changes for a particular game and the respective game gets the Adults Only label, then it will quickly make it to the list of banned games. Or if certain game updates include content that does not follow the Community Guidelines, those games will get banned as well.
The main takeaway is this one: if the game you’re planning to stream is not on this list, this does not mean you can automatically start streaming it. As a streamer, it is your responsibility to make sure you don’t stream Adults Only games or titles that obviously break the Twitch Community Guidelines.
Getting an Adults Only rating means annihilating your game’s chances of making it to the mainstream. As a result, most game developers do their best to avoid this rating. Apart from fulfilling players’ darkest phantasies, there are not too many advantages to creating AO games.
For example, Steam openly discourages adult content games and most American retailers refuse to carry adult-rated games. And the developers of many popular games such as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas or Manhunt 2 went to great lengths and heavily edited the original version of their games in order to go from the AO rating to M.
Why is Second Life banned on Twitch?
Perhaps the most surprising presence on Twitch’s list of banned games is Second Life. And many gamers, particularly fans of the game, asked the same question.
Why is Second Life banned on Twitch? Twitch decided to ban Second Life streaming because there are no clear boundaries for the type of behavior exhibited in the game. This means the Second Life gaming community is free to explore some of the darkest corners of the human mind, as well as create and engage in other activities, all of which comes into conflict with the Twitch Community Guidelines.
Wrapping Up
Twitch has very clear rules when it comes to the type of content gamers can stream on the platform. There are two main questions you should as yourself before streaming a particular game: ‘Does this game contain adult content?‘, and ‘Does this game follow the Twitch Community Guidelines?‘.
If the answer to the first question is No, and the answer to the second question is Yes, then you should be able to stream that game without any problems.
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