Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel has laughed off warnings Twitch is going to ban him if he keeps watching movies and TV shows on-stream, dubbing the popular purple platform the “wild west” when it comes to what’s actually a bannable offense.
Twitch stars watching TV shows — in most cases, Gordon Ramsay series — while streaming has been the talk of the digital town over the past few weeks.
Right in the middle of the storm has been Twitch’s most popular streamer, enigmatic French-Canadian star xQc, who had a heavy hand in starting the trend in late 2021. He’s been defending his show-watching exploits for more than a week now, especially after they gave him a chance to team up with Ramsay, and is still sticking to his guns in early January.
And, xQc claims, there’s no Twitch bans coming either.
The streamer is so convinced he won’t be banned, he’s laughing about the DMCA warnings, dubbing them “silly” and suspending viewers that say otherwise.
“I’m going to be honest, I think you’re just totally incorrect,” the French-Canadian star said to one Twitch fan who suggested watching shows was a sure-fire way to draw the ire of Twitch and subsequently get banned.
“Why do people act like DMCA are going to do sh*t?
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
“People have been doing all this DMCA sh*t for the longest time ever, watching shows included. I don’t think it’s an issue, really. They enforce stuff based on how likely it is to blow up, and then Twitch has to ban you. TV shows don’t really have that. It’s why boxing is, like, extremely DMCA, so it’s insane.
“Twitch is the wild west,” he claimed. “When it comes to other sh*t, it’s the wild west [for DMCA strikes]. Nobody knows what’s going to stick and what won’t stick.”
xQc did concede every Twitch streamer currently watching shows as part of their regular schedules could be hit with a tidal wave of new DMCA claims — like Ludwig warned earlier this week — but said he isn’t worried, because if it does happen, “it will hit every single streamer together.”
“Yeah, that could happen,” he said when it was brought up in his January 2 stream, “he [Ludwig] isn’t wrong. It is what it is, though. That would be an actual disaster for the entire industry. So what is the answer then?”
Lengyel has previously been suspended for DMCA strikes and was briefly barred from the purple platform in late July for watching Olympics streams with his fans.