A Twitch streamer has been suspended for playing the new Forspoken title seemingly early, despite it being live to some players, and some aren’t happy about it.
As we’ve seen over the year, whenever a big new game goes live, plenty of Twitch streamers rush to not only be one of the first to play it, but also be one of the first to complete it.
Of course, some of these are helped by pre-ordering special editions of games so they get them a few days early, but others use loopholes. By changing a console to another timezone, you typically can play a game a little earlier than planned – even if it’s only a few hours.
Some of the biggest names on Twitch have regularly done this in the past. Notably, xQc almost completed The Last of Us 2 before it was released in the United States. However, it seems they’re now clamping down on this practice.
Twitch streamer banned for playing Forspoken ‘early’ despite it releasing
With Forspoken, the new RPG title from Luminous Productions going live in the Southern Hemisphere, a number of Twitch streamers have jumped on the game a few hours early.
That included GTAMen, a Dutch content creator who typically focuses on GTA Online, as he was struck down with a 48-hour ban for playing the game early. “Banned for 48hrs for streaming a game that’s been officially released and legally bought. Cool,” the streamer said, showing the ban email from Twitch.
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He added that he’d submitted a ticket to have the ban overturned given that it has been released and others have already started streaming it – even if they aren’t in the correct timezone.
Banned for 48hrs for streaming a game that's been officially released and legally bought. Cool. pic.twitter.com/lOMjctFAx7
— Gtamen (@Gtamen) January 23, 2023
Some responses were disappointed by Twitch’s decision to bring out the banhammer, pointing to the fact that a number of others hadn’t received the same punishment.
“Cannot believe they actually messed up so bad. Hope you get this sorted out,” said one. “Twitch you better fix this ASAP,” added another.
Game publishers do, occasionally, warn players against trying to access games earlier by changing their system’s timezone, but punishments don’t usually extend to their channels. So, we’ll have to wait and see what happens.