Amazon’s video game streaming platform Twitch and perhaps their biggest direct competitor Kick has both been banned in the country of Turkey over concerns regarding gambling across their respective platforms, according to Gamerant.
Turkey’s National Lottery Association has announced the prohibition of both the Twitch and Kick platforms within the country.
Twitch had made significant alterations to their gambling policies back in 2022, which was a huge talking point in streaming headlines that year and led to the birth of Kick, which is owned by the prominent online gambling platform Stake which led to initial backlash from a number of streamers due to their concerns of the impact that gambling streams can have on people and children on such publicly visible platforms.
Kick used the opportunity to embrace casino streams using it as fuel to launch the initial version of Kick and start their campaign to reel in streamers from Twitch.
According to Ibrahim Haskoloğlu, Turkish officials “stated that Kick’s entry into Turkey was to attract Turkish youth to roulette”, in a report issued back on February 21st adding two days later that Turkey did the same to Twitch, which was “blocked by the decision of the General Directorate of National Lottery Administration” saying that access to the platform would cease within the following 24 hours.
Furthermore, the BTK (the Information and Communication Technologies Authority in Turkey) began investigating Twitch after broadcasters on Kick claimed similar content was being streamed there.
