Every popular streamer, whether they’re on Twitch, Facebook, or YouTube, will eventually have to deal with stream snipers. A stream sniper is more likely to come across a popular streamer. It’s never a pleasant experience, but it’s even worse when the stream sniper is another streamer trying to steal viewers. That’s exactly the topic Twitch streamer xQc brought up during a recent broadcast, even suggesting that Twitch should start issuing permanent bans.
Players who snipe while advertising their Twitch channels should be permanently banned, according to xQc, who refers to streaming stream snipers as TTV Andys due to their tendency to include “TTV” in their usernames. To put it another way, xQc believes Twitch should police itself when streamers on its platforms are stream sniping other streamers.
Technically, Twitch’s rules already cover this, and players who stream snipe others should be punished, especially if their goal is to steal viewers from other streamers.
However, proving the charge is difficult, as is determining the severity of the offense in order to determine an appropriate punishment. xQc even goes so far as to say that reporting other streamers for the behavior would be “petty,” so he doesn’t. He apparently believes Twitch should be more proactive.
To be fair to Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt, the game recently responded to criticism about stream sniping by adding a streamer mode. However, the update was only released recently, at the end of March. It’s possible that xQc was unaware that it had been added, but given xQc’s popularity, it’s unlikely.
In competitive multiplayer games with limited matchmaking systems, there’s only so much that can be done to avoid stream snipers when a streamer becomes as popular as xQc. Banning snipe-streaming Twitch streamers is unlikely to have an impact. After all, regular stream snipers and stream snipers from other streaming platforms would still exist. Although xQc is likely correct that Twitch should be more aggressive with enforcement, it is unlikely that this would make xQc’s Twitch streams any less stressful.
